


if everything happens that can't be done

by longnationalnightmare, oops_ohdear



Category: Crooked Media RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Regency, Arranged Marriage, Jealousy, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-27
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-09-28 07:44:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 45,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17178740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/longnationalnightmare/pseuds/longnationalnightmare, https://archiveofourown.org/users/oops_ohdear/pseuds/oops_ohdear
Summary: Marriage is not a matter that weighs heavily on Lord Jon Favreau’s mind—or at least, not his own marriage. But when his best friend begins courting, it becomes a question of some urgency.





	if everything happens that can't be done

**Author's Note:**

> extreme ardent thanks to kalpurna for being a patient & exacting regency beta, firmly forcing us to do things like "name the butlers" "consult a map" and "look up when chopin was born" in addition to the usual task of deleting 7,000 unnecessary commas. thank her for all accurate historical information and blame us for the anachronisms.

Jon was meant to be going over records of his father's latest business dealings but, as often happened in Lovett's company, he was instead laughing hard enough that he had to wrap an arm around his ribs to ward off a stitch.

This time it was because Lovett had come to call at his family's estate, found Jon in the library, and was reading to him from a book which claimed to contain hints on politeness and good breeding.

“It is, of course, necessary to combine a delicate taste—delicate, do you think anyone has ever described my taste as delicate?—with a _correct_ judgment, but without, it must be stressed, aiding one’s vanity or infringing on one’s duty.” Lovett recited in his haughtiest tone. “One’s _duty_. Do you suppose that refers to the duty of keeping an absurdly tidy house, or the duty of paying perfectly crafted compliments to people that don’t deserve them, or the duty of—of endlessly moralizing piety? Oh, or perhaps the duty of smiling up at some rich walrus, and lying back, and thinking of England?”

“I worry it might be all four,” Jon said through a last gasp of laughter. “Lovett why in the world are you _reading_ this thing?”

“Oh, it was a gift,” Lovett said archly. There was a smirk just lifting the corner of his mouth. “From one of my mother’s many, many concerned cousins. I think it’s meant to improve my prospects.”

"Surely your prospects don't need improving," Jon said staunchly. Lovett scoffed.

"Do you mean because surely I will not be married? You know that is not the case," he said.

"I meant," Jon said, "that your prospects are already excellent." It was true that Lovett had a sharp tongue, and a loud laugh, and that he disdained small talk and dancing and empty flattery, so perhaps he was not a traditional prize. But anyone with sense—anyone with _real_ sense—would see him and understand that they'd be better off without conversation about the weather or compliments about the drapes, if Lovett was what they got in exchange.

"Well," Lovett said, and snapped the book shut, "my mother’s cousin Matilda does not think so. Perhaps I'd better apply myself more strongly to my studies; my parents are more insistent daily about seeking a match."

"Are they?" Jon said. He could recollect conversations over the Lovett dinner table about seeing their eldest son married, but surely they'd meant in some far off future—not in the clear, sunlit present, when Lovett was curled up in the corner of the window seat, laugh lines still lingering at the corners of his eyes.

"It's not as if it comes as a surprise," Lovett said. "An advantageous marriage was always going to be necessary."

"Well, someday," Jon said.

"The estate is falling into disrepair, whether my father wants to admit it or not," Lovett said. "Soon there will be bills coming due that—it's not as if we _can't_ pay them," he said, arguing a point Jon hadn’t raised. Jon held up his hands, palms out, placating, and Lovett shrugged. "Someday is fast approaching. I had better prepare myself to be courted."

He said this last with a derisive arch of his eyebrow, and opened the book to a random page.

"Elegant deportment," he read. "It need not be said—oh, need it not?—that one must conduct oneself at all times with grace, ease, and courteous dignity. Extremes of emotion and public outbursts of speech, laughter, pretension, or flamboyance are to be avoided at all costs."

Jon tried to swallow his unease. Fine, then, Lovett would have to marry—there must be someone suitable, somewhere. He could not quite picture who they might be, but maybe Lovett could. And in the meantime Lovett would have no trouble judging those who were _not_ suitable. Jon could picture him storming into the library, his chin jutting out with a kind of mischievous temper while he objected to this man’s taste in literature or that one’s disregard for political theory. Lovett had a terrific gift for summing someone up in ten words or fewer—and they were not always flattering words, not if flattery was undeserved. Indeed in such cases he did not often restrain himself to ten words. How many times had he and Jon snuck away from the social whirl at some supper party or ball so that Lovett could rake the assembled gentry smartly over the coals, Jon muffling his laughter in his coat sleeve?

Lovett courting would not be so different. Lovett would appraise his suitors, and Jon would lend a willing ear—and a critical eye, where it was needed. And all in the name of a worthwhile cause: to find someone who would make Lovett happy. In that light, Jon did not feel so mistrustful of the whole affair.

 

 

Spring melted languidly into summer with no more talk of marriage. Or in any event not of Lovett’s marriage. The vicar’s daughter, in the village, married the blacksmith’s apprentice; and there was a week’s worth of rumors insisting that Lord and Lady Epsworth’s daughter, who had gone abroad to work as a governess, was engaged to a minor German baron, though nobody seemed to have any particular proof. It was the usual flow of gossip circulated at long luncheons and walks by the river, and in letters that passed between friends up and down the county. And Lovett kept up his usual amused commentary on it all, whether he came to call at the Favreaus estate or Jon went to call at the Lovett, or whether they went walking or riding themselves.

At the height of summer, as he had done for the past ten years or more, Jon went to stay a month with his old friend, Lord Vietor, now Viscount L’Isle of Penshurst.

Tommy might be a viscount, but he was still Tommy. Jon had known him since they were at Eton together, and they fell back into the rhythms of easy companionship and conversation, as it seemed they always did. And, too, Tommy was courting a young lady, a Miss Koch, as Jon knew from their correspondence. But seeing him in person made clear what Tommy's sometimes rather stilted letters did not: he was in love, and so, it seemed, was she, and so it was a joyful month. Jon spent much of it delightedly poking fun at Tommy; an imminent betrothal made it that much easier to draw a blush from him.

Jon wrote as much in his letters home, and to Lovett. He wrote, too, about the supper parties Tommy hosted, and attended with Jon in tow, and about how the gardens on Tommy's estate were expanding. It was, Jon had always thought, an enticing challenge to write about such things in a way that conveyed the sweet, syrupy slowness of a country summer.

 _In any case,_ he concluded to Lovett, in a letter he wrote during his last week in Kent, _by the time you receive this letter I'll doubtless be home, or nearly there. I have a very pretty picture in my mind of arriving just as the leaves begin to change, and of the weather holding for another week, at least, so that you and I can go riding in the orchards without you having the chance to mock me (relentlessly!) for bundling up. A coat and scarf are perfectly reasonable in autumn weather, as I have told you more times than I daresay either of us can count._

_Kindly ask the sun to linger just a little longer, on my behalf,_

_Jon_

 

 

The leaves were, indeed, changing as Jon's carriage clattered up the drive toward home. One of Jon's favorite things about the Favreau estate was the greenery; he'd always liked the thought that the trees he played in as a child and admired now were trees that had looked after generations of Favreaus, down through the years. So when he stepped out of the carriage and into the just-crisp fall air, he smiled even through the tired haze of several hours' travel. He exchanged pleasantries with Allen the footman, and with his driver, and strode briskly into the house, taking pleasure in the opportunity to finally stretch his legs.

There was an hour yet until dinner so Jon looked in on his parents in the sitting room to let them know he'd arrived home and then went to his own rooms to wash and change and generally try to shake the last of the journey from his shoulders. He had time, once necessities were dispensed with, to read through several letters that had arrived for him in his absence from friends and acquaintances who apparently hadn't kept track of Jon's travel calendar. There was an especially absorbing one from Miss Alyssa Mastromonaco, who was in London prior to the start of the season, and who had some biting opinions on scheduled parliamentary proceedings that made Jon nearly laugh out loud to read them. He made a mental note to share the letter with Lovett at the soonest opportunity—and a note, too, that he had no letters from Lovett; he hadn’t expected any, since he had given his return address at Tommy’s estate in the three letters he’d sent to Lovett, and received no reply there. Lovett was a notoriously fickle correspondent, and Jon took every chance to scold him about it, though of course the scolding quickly turned to laughing fits the moment Lovett got a word in edgewise.

Well. Several words in edgewise. But one was all it took to start.

Jon glanced at the clock, addressed an envelope to Miss Mastromonaco so he would not forget to reply to her later that evening, and went downstairs for dinner.

His parents were both at home—his father lately returned from a business trip—and so was Andy, so dinner was a family affair. Jon inquired about his father's travels, and his father inquired about his, and then talk turned for a time to news from the Continent.

"Each claim about the French is more absurd than the last," Andy said. "Next they'll be saying Bonaparte rides a bear into battle and commands his men only with the power of his mind. Jon, you ought to drag Lovett over for a visit. He always has decent information, though I've no idea how he gets it."

"I think he might simply read the same information as the rest of us, but with a clearer head," Jon said. "I thought I might call on him tomorrow—"

"Oh, of course!" his mother said. "You haven't had a chance to congratulate him yet, not in person."

"We've hardly had the chance to congratulate him, and we've been here all month," Andy said, taking another roll. "He's all in a tizzy." He gestured demonstratively with his fork.

"Don't tease," their mother said, but her voice was still light. "A wedding's a busy business."

"They aren't betrothed yet," Andy said. "Surely nobody's busy with—flowers or invitations or any of that."

"The fact that you've never planned a wedding is showing very plain," their father said, amused.

"I'm sorry," Jon said. He felt as if the conversation were washing up all around him, waves well above his head. Was one of the various Lovett cousins betrothed? That seemed very sudden; Jon had only been gone a month. "Whose wedding is Lovett planning?"

"Nobody's!" Andy said. "The fellow hasn't proposed, not yet. That news would be around the county faster than Napoleon on any kind of bear."

"Is," Jon said, and cleared his throat. His collar felt strangely tight. "Who is being courted, then?"

The table quieted, just for a moment; the clink of fork against knife as his father continued eating sounded fit to echo **.**

"Goodness," his mother said. "He really has been busy, I suppose, if he didn't write to you. I'll have words for him the next time I see him—happy news ought to be shared! No, dear, _Jonathan_ is being courted. By a charming young man, with, I believe, some industrial interests. A Mr. Clarke."

"No, he isn't," Jon said. He was distantly aware that he'd set his cutlery down.

"He certainly is," Andy said. He was back to eating, taking bites of potato as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening at all. "Mr. Clarke has taken him just lately to the theater, and anyone who takes Lovett to the theater, and smiles through his incessant commentary, not to mention a good deal of glaring from his fellow patrons, has got to be courting him."

" _I_ have gone with Lovett to the theater," Jon said.

"Well," Andy said, dismissive, "you don't count."

“That is—he would have told me,” Jon said. “If he were being swept off his feet by some whirlwind romance—”

"Well yes, I suppose it must seem very sudden to you, dear," their mother said. "The Lovetts invited Mr. Clarke to supper for the first time just after you'd left. But that's the way of these things, you know—it's not as if they didn't know who he was, or what he intended, and I'm sure they intended much the same. They've been hoping to find a match for long enough."

"It's been a _month_ ," Jon said and then, to ward off any more talk of intentions or matches, said, "Never mind. I'm only surprised, that's all. Do we, um. Do we intend to take on another member of staff for the stables, this winter?"

It was a feeble change of subject, but Andy, who loved riding and was intent on the proper care of the horses, leapt at it and began to talk about stablehands and groomsmen and all the rest. Jon had little to contribute, but he thought he probably nodded in the right places.

Lovett was not being courted, surely. Or if he was, it could not be as serious as the gossips made it out to be. If Jon considered it—extricated the facts from the tangle of excited chatter—there was hardly anything to it. Lovett had made a new acquaintance; perhaps, although it was difficult for Jon to picture, he had even decided to engage for once in a light flirtation. Was he not always saying that Dorset was wretchedly dull in Jon’s absence? There—he had found a way to occupy himself! But surely this man could not have proven himself a genuine prospect: not so quickly, and without even a note from Lovett saying, _Come home, for I want your opinion on a matter of some importance—!_

When Jon called in on him tomorrow, he would ask—or, no, perhaps even that would lend the story too much credence. Better: he would relate it all to Lovett, deliver his family's narrative, and let Lovett flay it neatly apart, as he always did with gossip and rumor. It would be amusing, and it would be over with, and then Jon could take Lovett to task for not writing him even a single letter, which might've avoided this misunderstanding altogether.

So satisfied, Jon finished his meal, and then his letter to Miss Mastromonaco, and took himself to bed.

 

 

He woke early the next morning, just as the sky through the window was lightening from gray. It was far earlier than he needed to be awake; earlier than any breakfast was ready, and certainly earlier than he could go calling, even on Lovett.

Might as well do something with the morning, then. He considered slipping downstairs and passing time on the pianoforte, but really he was too old to risk waking the house just because he was a bit restless. In the end, he pulled his desk chair over to the window and read by the light of the sunrise.

It was not his most concentrated effort—he lost his place a time or two, and had to begin again from the start of the page—but he'd gotten through perhaps half of it by the time breakfast was served.

"Are you going to call on the Lovetts today?" his mother asked as they were finishing their tea and toast.

"I thought this morning," Jon said. It wasn't entirely polite, perhaps—the afternoon hours were considered more sociable—but Jon and Lovett had long ago swept proprieties aside. Growing up together had that effect, Jon thought: after you had seen someone splattered with mud at age seven, and clumsily practicing the cotillion at twelve, and sticky with the juice from windfall apples at seventeen, you didn’t feel the need to observe etiquette quite so closely. And anyway, Lady Lovett had long ago told him, with an amused twist to her mouth, that any visitor who might rouse Lovett from his bed before ten o'clock in the morning would always be welcome.

"Whenever you go," his mother said, "will you extend them an invitation to supper, here, this coming Saturday? And Mr. Clarke may come as well, of course. It has been too long since we've seen them."

"I'll be sure to tell them so," Jon said, and did not bother pointing out that he hardly thought Mr. Clarke need be invited; once this business was cleared up, he could set his mother straight.

 

 

He set out not long after breakfast. It was a chilly morning, but the sunlight was burning steadily through the mist, and he thought it would develop into a fine day. Maybe it really wasn’t too late to take the horses out a few times more, before the weather truly turned. He could make good on his promise to go with Lovett out into the orchards, and observe some of last year's grafts.

He arrived at the Lovett estate in good time and reached their door, their longtime butler informed him, just as breakfast was finishing. Jon was shown into the sitting room and Lovett joined him there not long after, his hands still wrapped around a cup of tea.

“Lovett!” Jon called happily across the room. Half the joy of traveling, he thought, was returning home to the people you’d missed.

“Oh, are you back already?” Lovett said, though there was a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth. “We’d hardly had a break.”

“Yes, yes, my presence is a trial I’m sure,” Jon said. He strode forward, and clapped Lovett on the shoulder. “Gone for only a month, and yet you wouldn’t believe the gossip I missed!”

“…Oh?” Lovett said, raising an eyebrow. He made for the settee, and folded his stocking feet up underneath him. Jon sat across from him, and tried not to feel overdressed in his boots. Lovett had a remarkable gift for making improper attire seem like the comfortable and obvious standard.

“Normally I’d ask for your stories first,” Jon said. He was so anxious for Lovett’s reaction that he burst out with his punchline: “But I must tell you. The word at the Favreau supper table is that you are _betrothed_.”

“I am not,” Lovett said firmly, and took another long, bracing drink of his tea.

“Well of course that is what I _told_ them,” Jon said. He felt relieved laughter bubbling up, and did not bother to contain it entirely as he went on. “And then they said alright, not betrothed then, but _courting_ —Andy tried to say that a visit to the theatre meant you were practically engaged to be married, which I don’t believe is yet the law of the land—”

He broke off. He was waiting, he realized, for Lovett to interrupt with a joke, or a cutting remark. Or to roll his eyes, perhaps. Only Lovett was not interrupting, and had not rolled his eyes. He was staring into his cup of tea, instead, and fidgeting, shifting his weight.

“Or is it,” Jon said, faltering, “and no one has told me? I may have some engagements I was unaware of.”

“Of course it is not,” Lovett said. “Going to the theatre together does not mean you are betrothed, but it may mean that you are courting. Or being courted. Which I am. And there is reason to hope—I think, at any rate, and I am told—well. Honestly it is not all that interesting, at the moment. How was Vietor?”

“Tommy is well,” Jon said. The words seemed to drop from his mouth almost entirely independent of his brain. Jon felt as if Lovett had begun, quite casually, to speak in another language, without bothering to consult Jon and see if he knew it. Lovett _could_ not mean—only he’d said it, hadn’t he? _Which I am_. He could hardly mean anything else. And yet, when Jon had considered the prospect of Lovett’s eventual engagement—well. It had been impossible to imagine Lovett agreeing easily to marry anybody. Certainly, to Jon’s mind, any man would be lucky to have Lovett as a husband; but Lovett… Lovett was particular. He was guarded with strangers. For him to sit here placidly admitting that he’d conceded to be courted by a man he could not have known a month—by a man Jon had not even met!—it defied belief. _One month a year I am gone_ , Jon thought, _that’s all,_ and could have cursed himself, for the chances of Lovett truly liking the first eligible man he met after resigning himself to marriage seemed inconceivably slim. If Jon had been here, Lovett would have had someone in whom he could confide; someone with whom he could discuss the thing sensibly. Instead, here he was, apparently on the verge of engagement, and Jon hadn’t the slightest clue whether the match should be sanctioned. “Are you,” Jon said finally, but couldn’t think what to ask. “You didn’t—”

“Yes, yes,” Lovett said hurriedly, “I know I should’ve written to you about it.” He waved a dismissive hand. “But it has been a busy month, and you _know_ what I am like about letters. That you choose to be friends with me regardless is your folly, not mine! Let us say you forgive me, and spare the scolding, and move along. Tell me, have you read Byron’s latest?”

“Byron’s latest?” Jon echoed. It was not a _scolding_ he wanted to deliver, only he couldn’t quite get his head around what it was he wanted to do instead. Perhaps he did want to scold Lovett, for allowing himself to become very-nearly-betrothed in the space of a month, to a stranger, and without breathing a word about it. Was it such an easy thing to do that he felt no need to mention it? How could that be? How could this Clarke, after perhaps thirty days, have any real idea of who he was, or how he wanted to live, or how he ought to be treated? And how could Lovett treat the matter so casually?

Jon’s chest ached a little, as if he’d taken a sudden, great gulp of cold air.  

“—of course people do love to swoon over him,” Lovett said. Jon blinked. If Lovett was speaking about his miraculously appearing suitor, Jon might—but no, he realized. Lovett was speaking about Byron. “I have read excerpts of his speech in the House of Lords, and thought them moving,” he continued. “But I find his poems wallow too much for my taste.”

Jon wanted to say so many things, ask so many questions, that they all melted together into a kind of mental sludge, and what he said in the end was, “I have not read them.”

“Well,” Lovett said. “You may take my advice, then, and count yourself lucky that you’ll only read those worth your time. Actually, maybe I ought to make you read them all, and complain with me about the wallows. There is a kind of self-righteous, self-pitying tangle he gets into.”

“I am sure,” Jon said, and then, “You cannot force me to read bad poetry,” and then, “Lovett—” only before he could choose a conversational tack, Lovett was off again, insisting that he _could_ force Jon to read bad poetry, if it was for the right reasons.

The next half hour passed in much the same way: with Jon often unable to get a word in edgewise, or else getting so distracted by Lovett’s impassioned opinions on Byron, and then on Keats, and briefly on Shelley, that he replied to them instead of asking anything at all about Clarke or about Lovett’s state of mind. He felt half-asleep, slow and useless, and as a result, found himself quite startled when, at the tail end of a pithy summation of these authors’ collective faults, Lovett stood abruptly and said, “I would love to discuss meter and rhyme with you for the rest of the morning, but I’m afraid I have an appointment at the tailor’s in an hour, and I suppose I will have to dress a little more respectably.”

Jon rose too, clumsily, and said, “I had thought we might go riding.”

“You know my tailor waits for no man, Jon,” Lovett said. “He’s a taskmaster, and next season’s waistcoats are a matter of great urgency to him—”

Lovett cared about next season’s waistcoats only as far as their color, and he disliked his tailor. He thought the man talked too much.

“No, of course,” Jon said. “I only meant—perhaps another day.” He felt somehow that he shouldn’t let Lovett leave without an arrangement to meet at some future date; after all, this near-betrothal had taken place over the course of a month. If he let Lovett go now, the next time Jon saw him he might be married.

It was an absurd thought, but he acted on it anyway and blurted out, “My mother wishes me to extend your family an invitation for dinner, this Saturday. And you may bring your—you may bring Mr. Clarke, of course.”

“I’ll be sure to pass it along to my parents,” Lovett said.

“Andy’s anxious to see you,” Jon said. “He says he hasn’t, the whole time I’ve been away. I know you’re busy, but please?”

“Oh, I’m sure we will come,” Lovett said. “And Andy exaggerates. Which you know full well. Can you see yourself out? Only I don’t know where I left my navy coat, and I’m afraid it’ll take me most of the hour to find it.”

“I’m sure I’ll manage,” Jon said, and then, having said it, had to suit words to action, and walk to the sitting room door. “I’ll see you Saturday evening,” he said over his shoulder, and then hurried away before Lovett could tease him for trying to extract a promise—or worse, wriggle out of the one he’d more-or-less given.

 

 

The damndest thing about this Clarke fellow was that Jon could find out hardly anything about him.

His father offered pleasantries about the man’s eye for horseflesh (good, apparently), and his mother said she’d heard he had pretty manners. Andy could offer hardly anything at all. “There’s a scarcity of decent gossip about the man,” he said when Jon asked. “I imagine he’s just a bore.”

A bore was bad enough—Lovett was hardly suited to marry a bore—but did a bore sweep someone off his feet in the space of a month?

So Clarke was a cypher who could ride, presumably, and conduct himself unimpeachably in polite company. That was all very well, but did not address Jon’s sole pressing concern: what he hoped to gain from the match **.** A man might elevate his manners—and his friends, Jon thought, and his mistresses—with a title. Or sell off a historical estate to fund his stables. And then take Lovett—where? Some dreary house in London, probably, where Clarke might conduct his affairs and his business in equal measure.

“What a _villain_ you make him seem,” Andy said, uninterested. He was going over the month’s accounts. Jon was meant to be helping, but the matter of Lovett’s impending engagement seemed more pressing than what the household had spent on bread and wine and servants’ salaries. “At least if he were he’d be worth talking about, I suppose.”

“How do you know he isn’t?” Jon demanded. “You’ve not even met the man—”

“I’ve seen him once or twice from across the assembly rooms,” Andy said. “He _looked_ like a bore.”

“—and no one here has known him longer than a _month_ ,” Jon said. “A hasty rush to engagement must be the mark of a man with something to hide.”

“Or the mark of a man who’s struck a good deal, and knows it,” Andy said. “More scandalous still—perhaps they like each other. Have you considered?”

“...Perhaps,” Jon said.

Andy pushed the ledger away and tipped himself back in his chair. “Perhaps he finds Lovett’s drivel delightful. Perhaps he has been searching his whole life for a man who cannot tie a cravat for love or money—”

“There is nothing wrong with Lovett’s cravats,” Jon said, feeling oddly needled, but Andy blew out a laugh and set his chair to rights.

“And his waistcoats—!” he said theatrically. He clutched at his chest, then left off with a groan. “Christ, the numbers are all running together. Do your part, for goodness’ sake.”

So Andy was of no use on the matter, either.

Jon’s mother did at least send the Lovetts a formal invitation for supper, and receive a reply; and Jon was heartened, too, by the news that Stephanie was in town to visit her family and would join them on Saturday. Stephanie, he could readily admit, had more good sense than he and Lovett put together, and he felt certain she would see things his way.

 

 

Saturday was interminable. It seemed that everywhere Jon turned he was shooed away: out of the kitchens, where Mrs. Wellsey insisted he was underfoot; out of the sitting room, where his mother was hosting several of the neighboring ladies for tea and conversation; and out of the stables where the head groomsmen insisted, kindly, that he was making the horses restless.

In the end Jon passed the last hour before supper on the pianoforte, though none of his original compositions would stay straight in his mind, and he found he had to fall back on Mozart and Haydn.

Perhaps, he thought, he would lay eyes on the man and be proven entirely wrong. Perhaps Clarke was an upstanding fellow, with a romantic temperament, and he’d fallen in love with Lovett in the space of a few weeks’ time, and wooed him, too. Perhaps seeing him would put Jon’s mind at ease, and he would be assured of Lovett’s present and future contentment, and could happily toast them both at their wedding.

A discordant note sounded through the room. Jon looked down at his hands on the keys, and winced. He felt he should apologize to Mozart.

He glanced at the clock on the wall: a quarter to five. Surely he would be a negligent host if he did not make his way to the dining room now?

As it turned out he was correct, for he arrived just as Morton, the butler, began announcing their guests.

The Lord and Lady Lovett entered first, and then Stephanie whom Jon, even in his state of anticipation, was very glad to see; this was her first visit home since she’d been married. And then there was Lovett, his posture careful. Jon could not catch his eyes, for he was looking back over his shoulder, and then a man drew level with him who must be Mr. Clarke.

He was a thin fellow, of middling height, and his face seemed almost sharp—something about the line of his jaw, perhaps, or the turn of his nose. He and Lovett were, Jon couldn’t help but notice, hardly touching. Only even as he clocked it, he saw Lovett glance around the room and then reach up and tuck his arm into the crook of Clarke’s elbow, almost as if for balance on rough terrain. Clarke looked down at him and smiled, and patted Lovett’s hand with his free one, which was all wrong any way you approached it. Lovett hated to need anyone’s touch, for balance or reassurance.

And yet he did not pull away.

It was all so uncharacteristic that Jon felt quite at sea. He barely knew what to think. And yet: _he cannot be happy,_ Jon thought, still staring at Lovett’s arm, and felt sure he must be right.

“Do sit down,” Lady Favreau said to the room at large. Jon startled away from his observation of Lovett’s and Clarke’s hands, and dropped into his chair. “And of course you have all been announced, but Jonathan, you must introduce us properly!”

“Of course,” Lovett said. He inclined his head, almost woodenly, as if his cravat hid a hinge. “I am only sorry I could not do it sooner. Favreaus, this is Mr. William Clarke. Mr. Clarke, these are the Favreaus.” He proceeded to introduce them, one by one, around the table, Clarke nodding to each in turn, until finally Lovett arrived at Jon, directly across from them, and said, “This is Jon. He is—he is an old friend.”

Jon wanted, childishly, to protest. He was Lovett’s _oldest_ friend, in fact, and his dearest—if you could make such a claim for someone else. He was uncomfortably aware that you could not, or ought not, at any rate. At the very least he _could_ say that Lovett was _his_ oldest friend, and _his_ dearest. But he bit his tongue and nodded to Clarke instead. He even, under the weight of his mother’s gaze, managed a, “Charmed.”

“Likewise,” Clarke said, and the evening swept forward.

Talk of Stephanie’s visit and her married life in Lincolnshire carried the table through the first course. She still seemed as happy as she had at her wedding, and Jon was glad of it. Lovett must have felt the same, for her gossip about staffing the household and meeting the neighbors drew easier smiles from him than Jon had seen since he arrived.

“And,” she said, as the soup was cleared away, “I timed my visit well, for it coincided with Mr. Clarke’s!”

“Yes,” Jon said. He had never been all that good at the sort of icy composure which froze out unwelcome company, but he did his best now to flatten the cheer from his voice. “What brings you to our part of the world, Mr. Clarke?”

“A visit was recommended to me by friends that I trust,” Clarke said, “and indeed I have found the countryside to be very beautiful, and the company exceedingly diverting.”

“We are glad to hear you say so,” Lady Lovett said, smiling. There was a hubbub as the main course was brought to the table, but it could not distract from the way that, on the tabletop, Clarke’s hand once again settled briefly over Lovett’s.

“I do hope I have forged lasting friendships,” Clarke said.

“And so quickly!” Jon said. “How long have you been in Dorset, Mr. Clarke? I believe I heard a month?”

“You heard rightly,” Clarke said.  

“Did you know the Lovetts before then?” Jon asked. “Or is it a happy coincidence that you get along so well?”

“Only by favorable reputation,” Clarke said. Jon was dimly aware that it was a small supper table, and that conversation had quieted around them, but it was not as if he was saying anything improper, and besides, he was not asking any questions Clarke _ought_ to be afraid to answer before an audience.

“Why, then you hardly know what a scoundrel Lovett can be, when he puts his mind to it,” Jon said. “Has he told you yet about the many tutors he ran out of the house? I would like to say I helped, but the truth of it is I hardly contributed. Although I did serve as a rehearsal audience for several of his arguments—Lovett, do you remember when you decided one man wouldn’t do because of his thoughts on the future of steam power? You shouted at me about sea voyages for what must have been an hour, at least, but by the time you unleashed it on the unlucky fellow in question it only took perhaps twenty minutes for him to wilt.”

“Yes, well,” Lovett said. Generally a mention of the story had him holding court all over again about what marvels steam might work, but now he only said, “I think a tutor ought to look kindly on innovation.”

“I agree,” Stephanie said firmly. “The man was unfit.”

“Well,” Jon said, a little at a loss. He turned again to Lovett. “You certainly had more to say about it at the time. And I heard it all! There was another—”

“Perhaps we had better just agree,” Lovett said, “that I had definite opinions about education.”

“A fine cause,” Clarke said, and Lovett’s shoulders, which had risen a little toward his ears, smoothed out.

“You did,” Jon agreed. “Why, when I went off to school we wrote the most miserable letters back and forth. A chief feature of Lovett’s first was a screed against education out of the home—I still have it. It was downright strident, and I found it very cheering at the time.”

“What a silly thing to keep,” Lovett said. He was, Jon found with a start, glaring at Jon across the table. He could not say if it was the words or the look which stung more. A silly thing to keep? “We were barely more than children.”

“Perhaps I treasure any correspondence from you,” Jon said, searching for more familiar ground. “You will find,” he added to Clarke, “when you have occasion to return home, that Lovett is a fickle correspondent indeed.”

“Oh, I hope not,” Clarke said. “Or in any case, I hope not to go far enough to require a letter—not anytime soon.”

Lovett, again, settled back into his chair a little. Jon felt a formless sort of anxiety winding between his ribs. If he pursued the topic of Clarke’s future plans, then perhaps he might cause the man to admit something of his motivation; but it was a deeply discordant note to see Lovett so uncomfortable here, at Jon’s family table, where he ought to be as comfortable as if he were at his own.

“Tell us more of your home, Mr. Clarke,” Stephanie said. “I understand you split your time between London and Oxfordshire?”

“Just so,” Clarke said, and Stephanie led the conversation neatly into talk of estate management—which, Jon noted, Clarke took as an opportunity to allude, more than once, to his steady (and, it was delicately implied, considerable) income.

The rest of the meal passed without incident, largely because Stephanie always seemed to have a question to ask any time the talk lulled: she encouraged Clarke to speak about his tenants, and then Andy to discuss the latest from France; and she drew Jon’s mother into a long discourse on the various gardens of the county that lasted through the entirety of dessert.

When the meal was finished, Lady Favreau rose, and invited the ladies to adjourn with her to the parlor while the men remained behind. Port was brought out, and Andy, perhaps taking his cue from Stephanie, dominated the conversation with a rambling discursus on the latest prizefights.

“Do you think such violent entertainment encourages other sorts of violence?” Clarke asked. “I am thinking chiefly of the Luddites, but other such mobs, as well.”

“I do not feel the Luddites are violent,” Lovett said. “Or, I do, but I do not feel they are violent without cause.”

“Nor do I,” Jon said. He strove to catch Lovett’s eye, but Lovett had not allowed it since that glare at dinner, and he did not allow it now. “After all, many of them are starving; and not just they, but their husbands and wives and children, too.”

“It is true that their livelihood has suffered,” Clarke said. “But I do not think that gives them license to harm the livelihoods of others.”

“Perhaps you are right,” Lovett said, and, astoundingly, fell silent. Jon wanted, for a brief, vivid moment, to get up and take Lovett by the shoulders and shake him. He knew for a fact how passionately Lovett felt about the Luddite uprisings, and the Crown’s insufficient response. That he should quiet himself now, to keep the peace with Clarke, was definitive proof that Clarke did not know him at all.

“Shall we join the ladies?” Jon’s father asked, and instead of shaking Lovett by the shoulders Jon had to watch as Lovett once again linked his arm with Clarke’s, and allowed himself to be led from the room.

Jon made for one of the settees as he entered the parlor, but Stephanie drew him aside, over to the fireplace and a little away from the others. He waited for her to speak, but she only frowned at him, not a stern look so much as a thoughtful one, as if she were working out a puzzle.

“I’m very glad to see you again,” he ventured, when she still did not say anything. “And to see you so happy.”

“I am glad to see you, too,” she said. “But I must say, Jon, I am _not_ glad to see you arguing over Lovett. You were like a dog with a bone. A relatively mild-mannered dog, I grant you, but all the same.”

“What?” Jon said.

“There is no call to prove you know him best,” she said. “He will not forget you just because he is courting.”

“Of course not,” Jon said. “I was not trying to prove anything, Stephanie, I only intended to—to get to know Mr. Clarke a little better.”

Stephanie raised an eyebrow with evident skepticism. Jon took her meaning quite clearly, for no other expression made her look so like Lovett, who had arched a disbelieving brow at Jon more times than could be counted.

“Really, Jon,” she said. “Marriage need not threaten a friendship, and certainly not one so close as yours and Lovett’s. You’d do well to remember that.”

Jon might’ve argued further, but there was a call to form partnerships for whist, and he did not find another moment to plead his case to Stephanie before the evening drew to a close.

 

 

Jon meant to raise the topic of riding again with Lovett some time in the next week, but on Sunday the skies opened and water fairly sheeted down. The rain continued—though not at quite such a volume—for several days, and of course Jon would not subject either of them to riding in such weather. He thought that Lovett might stop by, instead, in the carriage. He often passed rainy days in the Favreaus’ library, declaiming out loud especially absurd passages from his literature of choice, and demanding that he and Jon swap books so that he could leave scathing reviews in the margins of whatever Jon was reading. But he did not appear, and Jon found himself somehow reluctant to go and call on the Lovetts. It was partly the thought of Stephanie’s gentle scolding, and partly the uneasy thought that he might arrive just in time to see Clarke propose, for it certainly seemed that whatever else his intentions, marriage figured prominently.

He could not understand how Lovett’s parents had allowed Clarke to worm his way so neatly into their good graces, or to make such public gestures as to place his hand over Lovett’s at the dinner table. It could not have been clearer that his presence discomfited Lovett, and that Lovett did not feel at liberty to say so. It was this, more than anything, that Jon found almost unbearable: when had Lovett ever felt unable to speak his mind? But his relative silence around Clarke spoke volumes, Jon thought.

And that was without considering the matter of what Clarke might attain from the pairing. Jon knew that most marriages were contractual to some extent, and he could only assume that Clarke felt himself lucky to have made a match with someone like Lovett: handsome and deferential, well-mannered, even-tempered and tractable.

Only of course, none of that described Lovett at all: only the version of Lovett whom Jon had encountered tonight. The neat, reserved man whom Clarke must believe himself engaged to based on the evening’s performance was—well. A fiction. A character Lovett was choosing for some reason to play. And indeed, a character Jon thought less of Clarke for liking. The man who’d slipped his hand easily into the crook of Clarke’s elbow and let Clarke smile down at him—that man was not Lovett, who was prickly and mercurial and tempestuous, who could sink into a touch one moment and shake it hissingly off the next. Perhaps Clarke was happy enough to rush towards marriage with that man—perhaps he enjoyed to have his ego stroked, his hand held, to cast a glance at Lovett and be met with the small, reserved smile that made Lovett look like he was posing for his portrait—but whatever attraction Clarke felt for Lovett, it was not _true_. And Jon felt blazingly sure that the deception would serve neither party in the long run.

What Jon needed was another opportunity to speak with Clarke, and to discern his motivation. And happily he did not have to invent the chance from whole cloth, for on Tuesday an invitation arrived for himself and Andy to attend a ball at the local assembly rooms. It was certain that Lovett would be invited, and Mr. Clarke: Lovett because any young man or woman of breeding in the county was bound to be welcome, and Clarke because fresh blood and fresh gossip prized higher than gold.

So it was that on Thursday evening, Jon and Andy arrived at the local inn and disembarked from their carriage.

Jon had heard tell about the assembly rooms in London and Bath, though he’d never had cause to visit himself—great sprawling spaces with high ceilings, and smaller rooms attached for cards and tea and supper. Here in Dorset there was considerably less grandeur. The assembly rooms were, in fact, a single ballroom, attached to the inn. Still, Jon thought, as they joined the press of people moving inside, effort had been made—the furniture strewn about the room was fashionable, the scrollwork distinctly French despite the present struggle against Napoleon. And, too, there was chinoiserie wallpaper. It was a touch too busy to suit his personal taste, but it was certainly of the moment. And the public gardens back behind the inn were small but well-maintained. The whole institution did the town credit.

There was already a quadrille playing as they entered, and Andy disappeared almost immediately to survey prospective partners.   

Jon, too, set off around the room, though his progress was slow. It seemed as though every third person was an acquaintance, or a neighbor, or a family friend, and he had not seen most of them since returning from Kent. So it was that he found himself caught up in one conversation after another about the weather, the town gossip, the coming London season, until, after some time, a voice called out, "Lord Favreau!" and Jon turned to see Clarke making his way through the crowd, Lovett trailing a pace behind.

"Good evening," Clarke said as they arrived, and Jon inclined his head to each of them in turn. It was strange not to reach out and draw Lovett closer—shake his hand, or clasp his arm—but the way he was standing, angled just slightly toward Clarke, seemed to discourage it somehow. So did the brief, stormy look he leveled over Jon's shoulder just as Clarke said, "It is a pleasure to see you again. I keep saying to Lovett that I would like to spend more time in your company. You seem to know all his most intriguing stories."

"I suppose those are the sorts of stories you have, when you've known someone as long as we've known each other," Jon said. "We grew up together, you know—well, probably Lovett has told you." He smiled at Lovett, attempting to draw him into the conversation, but Lovett only lifted his chin a little further, defiant, and would not look at him directly. Jon was not forgiven for dinner, then, although what he had done to give offense to _Lovett_ he could not say.

"Oh, a little," Clarke said lightly. "I'm sure you can tell me more."

 _What little?_ Jon wanted to ask, though it was not from Clarke that he wanted an answer. He wanted to catch Lovett's eyes, despite the storm, and demand to know—had he summed Jon up in a sentence? In three? Did he rate a paragraph? He had not, after all, merited a letter with the glad tidings. But surely their whole lives together, mischief and companionship and shared secrets—

"Do we really need Lord Favreau to trot out any more embarrassing childhood anecdotes?" Lovett asked, interrupting Jon's speculation. "Surely a dinner's worth was enough."

"Embarrassing? Nonsense," Jon said, startled. "You were not embarrassing, you were only thoroughly yourself. It's strange," he added, to Clarke. "I can scarcely imagine someone knowing him at all if they didn't know about the madcap schemes he formulated all throughout our childhood. Has he told you about his grand plans to raid the kitchen, when he was seven?"

"I have not," Lovett said, loudly.

"It is a story that offers great insight into the inner workings of his mind," Jon said. He was hardly teasing: Lovett's plan had been well-calculated, and carried out with the strange slapdash precision that characterized so many of his best ideas.

"And yours, I imagine," Clarke said. "I know you and Lord Lovett are dear friends, and I hope you and I will therefore have occasion to call each other so."

"It is true," Jon said, and, feeling strangely frantic, for Lovett would still not look at him, he added: "After all, we hardly know each other. Indeed, I feel I hardly know of you—I suppose I didn't, until I returned home, for Lovett never made mention of you."

Lovett did look at him, then, but it was not—Jon did not know what he was hoping for. Some look of recognition, perhaps; some acknowledgement of how strange it was for Lovett to speed ahead toward marriage, a husband, a future, and not breathe a word of it to Jon, when they had known all each others’ secrets. Lovett, at least, knew all of Jon’s.  

Instead Lovett's eyes snapped toward Jon, wide and almost shocked; there was an instant where Jon almost thought he saw pain there, and opened his mouth to apologize—it had seemed so necessary to say, and yet it had been out of turn, he had known even as he was saying it—only then Lovett's eyes narrowed, and fury washed clean over his face.

"Indeed? Well then I am doubly glad to have met you now," Clarke said. Jon had nearly forgotten he was there. "We must speak more later, Lord Favreau. I should like very much to hear about this kitchen burglary."  There was a swell of music beneath his words: the beginnings of a waltz. To Lovett, he said, "Would you care to dance?"

"I would," Lovett said, sharp and declarative, and wound his hand tight around Clarke's as if worried he might otherwise disappear. Clarke smiled, and inclined his head, and led Lovett out onto the floor for the waltz.

Lovett, as a rule, did not care to dance much—or not at the assembly rooms, anyway. In the privacy of his own home, or Jon's, when they'd both just been learning the steps of quadrilles and cotillions, Lovett would sometimes agree to practicing together; and then Jon could get him laughing if he pulled enough faces and urged him around the floor with enough speed. But that had been when they were still practically children, and before the waltz came into fashion. If Jon had pulled Lovett so close, guided him in such an intimate whirl around the floor, it would've been scandalous, not entertainment.

Jon would not have thought Lovett would like to waltz.

The glimpses he caught of Lovett's face were—flustered was perhaps the best word. Jon had the urge to march out onto the floor and take Clarke by the shoulders; to say, "Can you not see that he hates an audience he does not choose himself?" Or perhaps it should be more simple: "Not _this_ ," or, "not _here_." How could a man be set to propose marriage to Lovett, and yet not know better than to invite him to waltz, and spread a hand across the small of his back in the midst of a crowd?

The one saving grace, he thought irritably, was that a waltz was short.

And indeed the music did fade away before long, and partners formed up for the cotillion. Clarke guided Lovett off the floor across the room from Jon. The crowd kept blocking Jon’s view, dancing couples passing across his field of vision and whirling away again, granting Jon intermittent, too-brief glimpses of Clarke’s back and Lovett's upturned face, a little flushed, a wayward curl hanging over his forehead. As Jon watched, Clarke reached out and—

A couple galloped past, obstructing his view. When he could see again, Clarke's hand was on Lovett's cheek, and Lovett’s hair had been pushed back from his face.

Jon felt like an intruder, suddenly, even from across the room. They were in public: whatever he observed between Lovett and Clarke, it ought be appropriate for anyone to see. And yet, what was passing between them—how close they were standing—that hand—! It was _not_ appropriate. It was no great matter if Jon observed this excessive intimacy, he reminded himself, no matter how much the sight might unsettle him, but if someone else happened to glance at them…

No one else, however, seemed to have marked the liberty taken. When Jon blinked and refocused his gaze, Clarke’s hand had already dropped once more to his side. Still—if the gesture had passed unnoticed, that was pure chance. After all, _Jon_ had seen. And of course it was not customary for young men to have chaperones, but there was still behavior—public behavior—that would cause gossip. For a couple who was not yet betrothed—and what if Clarke did not propose? The scandal _then_ —

He was making his way around the edge of the dance floor before he realized it. He got within seven, six, five steps of them before Lovett glanced over and spotted him coming. There was a sudden, bitter twist to his mouth. He broke away from Clarke, glancing up at him.  "Can you spare me for a moment? I need to have a word with Lord Favreau."

He hardly waited for Clarke to acquiesce before he caught Jon briefly by the sleeve of his coat and yanked him away from the crush of the crowd. Jon had no time to protest, but then, he had no reason to; he followed Lovett out of the back doors and into the garden.

 

 

The sun had only just set, a few lingering streaks of color fading to gray in the sky, and as the night was young and the dances just beginning, the gardens were near empty. Jon could hear, faintly, the music from inside, and outside the sounds of birds quieting for the evening and insects beginning to chirp. Lovett, in the dim, slow atmosphere, was anything but quiet. His movements were fitful, almost, as he rounded a corner of the hedge and turned sharply to face Jon.

“What,” he said, and his voice was low, a carrying kind of whisper, “are you playing at?”

Jon had a brief moment of something like relief, for here was the energy, the emotion, that made Lovett seem himself again, after a week of hunched shoulders and unhappy looks. Jon welcomed it, even if he had to defend himself against it.

“I’m not playing at anything,” he said. “You are the one who dragged me out here. I saw you across the room. I meant to—to continue our earlier conversation—”

“Ah, yes, our earlier conversation!” Lovett said, his voice rising. He seemed to realize, for he darted a look about before continuing in a strained whisper. “The earlier conversation when you had the, the gall, the rank impropriety—oh, never mind the impropriety! Hang the impropriety! When have you and I ever cared for propriety! It was not that you were improper, it is that you were a—a _bully_. You were un _kind_.”

“I spoke out of turn,” Jon said haltingly. The words did not come fast enough, not half so fast as Lovett’s: mostly because Lovett’s words still seemed as if they were jangling between them. Jon could hardly parse them. Surely, if there was one thing he had never been—

“What kind of a person,” Lovett continued, unassuaged. “What kind of a friend—is this how you intend to behave as a rule from now on? Or is it only in my company, with regards to my person and my—my affairs?”

“Lovett,” Jon said. He felt at sea. The evening air was cooling rapidly, and the sounds of nature had died down almost entirely. It was only Lovett, his face half in shadow, hurling accusations that Jon could not seem to anchor. “You are my dearest friend, you know that—”

“Oh?” Lovett said, and there was mockery there, like he might try to force a laugh. “This is how you treat a friend? Illuminating all my worst qualities? Dredging up my childhood misbehaviors? And always in front of a man who is meant to—a man who I hope may offer for me?”

“Hope—Lovett, what does he _know_ of you?” Jon said. He found his own voice was louder than it ought to be, and he could not quite bring himself to care. He had to make Lovett _see_. “If you asked him to speak plain—what reason could he possibly offer for wanting to marry you?”

There was a moment, as the words dropped from Jon’s tongue, when he had the strange, frantic thought that perhaps he could swallow them back before they hit the air; before Lovett heard them. Lovett was so utterly still, before him, and the gardens so utterly still, around them—maybe he hadn’t said them at all? Maybe he’d only thought them, and he could beg Lovett for a moment, just a moment, to think them over, prepare his argument, explain himself properly—

Only then Lovett took a shuddering breath, as if he’d been slapped, and said, in the scathing tone a tutor might take with an especially slow pupil, “How perceptive you are!”

“Lovett,” Jon said again, but Lovett did not pause.

“Mr. Clarke, as I may presume you’ve already divined, has money but no title; I, a title, and no money to speak of, which of course you well know—”

“I only meant—” Jon said, and again was cut off. His heart was kicking against his ribs, high and a little frantic.

“—and so each of us has something to offer the other, you see, even though he may never be brought to love me, as you point out—”

“I didn’t say that,” Jon said, now much too loudly.

Lovett was practically shaking. His eyes were two bright spots in the near-darkness. “Do you find it _so_ impossible to believe that someone might come to care for me on my merits? _Don’t_ ,” he bit out as Jon opened his mouth again.

“Lovett,” Jon said anyway—or tried to. He could not be sure that his voice was working as it should. _I do not_ , he wanted to say— _I meant quite the opposite—I am asking why_ you _should care for_ him! But the words would not come; and in the absence of his own voice, there came another, calling from the door. Clarke’s voice, Jon realized, after Lovett had already taken two steps, and then three. When had he turned? When had he moved away? “Lovett!”

It was no use. Lovett did not so much as look over his shoulder. He reached the door—Clarke’s shadow there, waiting for him, impossibly long as it stretched out over the grass—and then the door shut again, and they were both gone.

 

 

Jon only half-remembered the journey home, though he must have collected Andy and had the carriage brought round. He spent a restless night, sleeping in fits and starts.

He could not forget the look on Lovett’s face.

He rose with the sun, determined to go and see Lovett and make an apology. He would explain himself, too, given the chance; but the apology was paramount. He ate breakfast, once it was prepared, and took a final glance out the front windows: the sky was gray and the air crisp, but it was not raining. He would walk.

Walking to the Lovett estate from the Favreaus’ was lovelier by far on foot than it was by carriage, although Jon couldn’t really appreciate it now. The path took Jon through the orchards, apples ripening on the branches until the cultivated trees stopped, abruptly, at the crest of the hill, and gave way some yards onward to much older, much wilder forest. There had always seemed to be something magical about it when he was a child. As if you might wander down the hill and back in time, all at once. He and Lovett had invented such stories about the wood—a hodge-podge of the biological science Lovett read to no end and the fairy-stories Jon heard, and told, and re-told. Jon had believed, when he was nine, that there were fairies in the wood who made their food from the sun, the way plants did. In the right mood, he might still believe it now.   

That was what he meant. About Clarke. He meant that if Clarke didn’t know Lovett—really, properly know him—then how would he know that his duty, as a husband, was to believe in fairies? Or, better than believe in them: to help Lovett invent them.

Well, not literally, not now that Lovett was nearly thirty, but—it was all part and parcel of the same thing, Jon thought. Clarke ought to understand how to care for Lovett. How to egg him on, when he needed it. Join in, when he needed it. Serve as a partner in crime. Clarke would _have_ to know Lovett. If he didn’t—didn’t know what woke him in the morning, lit him up, brought him alive—then how could he guarantee Lovett’s happiness? And he had do that. If he were to be Lovett’s husband, he _must_ do that.

Only that was not what Jon had said, given the opportunity. Given several opportunities. The memory of it churned in his gut: because the truth of it was, though he still felt that he was correct in his ideas, he had not been correct in his behavior.

 

 

It was a stream which set the boundaries between the Favreau and Lovett estates, and Jon, lost in thought, had crossed the bridge almost without noticing. Now the ground inclined once more before him, and at the top of the hill was the Lovett manor, stately even in the first stages of disrepair. Jon climbed the zigzag path towards it, past the old folly, and at last reached the front steps and rang the bell.

Hughes, the butler, answered, as he had every time Jon had called on the Lovetts since he was a babe in arms.

"My lord," he said, as he did every time; Jon had tried to make the case for a less formal address, but it never worked. Lovett would tsk and shake his head. Even you cannot charm the good manners out of a butler, he'd teased Jon more than once. Now, though—perhaps Jon was imagining it, but he thought Hughes looked, if possible, a bit frostier around the edges.

"Good morning," Jon said. "I had hoped to call on Lovett. Is he—is he in?"

"I am afraid his lordship is otherwise engaged," Hughes said.

"I can wait," Jon said, trying to make it sound like a declaration and not a question. He had never been so uncertain of his welcome here.

"He expects to be occupied for the remainder of the day," Hughes said. "I will tell him that you called. Would you like to leave a card?"

"I'm afraid I didn't bring one," Jon said. It was like being a child again and failing a test of etiquette.

"As you say," Hughes said, and nodded to him in a manner that certainly _should_ have looked deferential, and shut the doors.

Perhaps, Jon thought, Lovett really was terrifically busy. What was definitely true was that the Lovetts could not afford to keep a full staff befitting the size of their estate, but those they had kept on were loyal to a fault. If Lovett was _not_ terrifically busy, Jon would not find it out from Hughes.

He did not seem to have any option left to him except to turn and go back down the front steps toward home.

He tried twice more over the course of the week. Once, he was told that Lovett was out on business and there was no guarantee when he might be home, and once he was told again that Lovett was occupied, from sunrise to sunset. It seemed increasingly likely that, no matter how well thought out or eloquent his apology might be, he would not be given the chance to deliver it.

Jon knew he must be a nuisance to his family, and to the servants, as restless as he was. He could not find anything to occupy his mind; but that, he admitted to himself one rainy afternoon, was because his mind was already occupied wholly by the fear that he might have done something that, as far as Lovett was concerned, was unforgivable.

He was in the library, several books abandoned on the desk before him. It seemed unthinkable that Lovett might live out the rest of his days thinking of Jon as a bully. Unkind. Un _kind_. It was no wonder he could not concentrate on the words on the page, when he could still hear Lovett's so plainly.

There was a knock at the door. Before Jon could answer, it swung open, and Lovett stepped through.

"Hullo," he said, rather abruptly. Jon startled to his feet and then did not know if he ought to move any closer. He gripped the edge of the desk, and stayed where he was. He felt a little like he'd sighted some rare, wild animal: as if he could not afford to startle it, or it might flee. Jon hated feeling that way about Lovett, of all people—how many states of dishevelment and absurdity had they seen each other through? How many confidences had they shared? And now, somehow, he was a threat for Lovett to fear?

"They let me in downstairs," Lovett said.

"You do not need to explain yourself," Jon said. "You are always welcome here."

Lovett winced, and Jon remembered belatedly that before this week, he had always been welcome at the Lovett estate.

"I did not mean—" he said, and that was so reminiscent of that night at the assembly rooms that he cut himself off and said instead, "Will you sit down?" He gestured to the armchair, across from the desk. "I—you do not owe me anything, but I would like to explain myself."

Lovett moved a little further into the room, but he did not sit down.

"I wanted to tell you, first," he said, only he did not say anything more.  He was shifting his weight from foot to foot, and Jon still felt that he might turn and go at any moment. Perhaps if Jon just came out with it—

"I owe you an apology," he said, just as Lovett said, "I am engaged. To be married."

There was a moment of strange, ringing silence.

Jon knew he needed to speak, and yet the words would not come—or rather, the words crowding to the front of his tongue were the apology he'd meant to make, and he had to swallow them back and fumble for something else.

"To Mr. Clarke?" he managed at last. It was a useless thing to say, but it did at least make Lovett huff out a shaky breath, and something like a smile pulled at the corners of his mouth.

"No, Jon, to a charming hare I met on the walk here—yes, to Mr. Clarke."

"Of course," Jon said. "It was a silly—I'm sorry."

There was another pause and then Lovett, sounding almost combative, said, "Are you not going to congratulate me?"

"Oh," Jon said, and finally some ingrained good manners did rise to the surface. "My—my warmest congratulations to you, Lovett."

Something passed over Lovett's face, quicker than Jon could track it, and then he ducked his head.

"It was a—I was joking," Lovett said.

Jon did not argue, but Lovett had not been joking. He could not say quite what Lovett had been, but he had not been joking.

"No," he said instead, "truly, it's." He broke off and swallowed. All of the carefully pretty words he'd practiced, the apology he'd been almost frantic to deliver, seemed to have deserted him. "Your happiness is all I… are you?"

"What?"

"Happy," Jon said. The word felt weighty.

"—Delighted," Lovett said. "It is a—a better match than anyone ever thought I'd make. You must perceive that."

"Well," Jon said. "Then—my congratulations. My best wishes. All of them." He inclined in a half-bow that was nearly interrupted by the desk. He thought he probably meant it in jest, although he couldn't seem to be sure. He felt a little as if he was being sawed through at the waist.

"God, stop," Lovett said, and, in a flurry of movement, fairly flung himself into the armchair. "I did not come here so you could be all—" he waved a hand at Jon. "Never mind. Would you sit down? You're looming."

"I don't loom," Jon said, and sat. "It's not my fault I'm taller than you."

It was an old, stupid argument, retread so many times that Jon could recite both parts from memory. It felt nearly normal, only—

"I do still need to apologize," he said. "No, please, let me speak—I had a plan, you know. You really have upended this conversation."

"One of my many gifts," Lovett said. "You don't need to apologize. I am engaged. We should put these last few weeks behind us. God knows I would much rather we did—"

"My fear was that Mr. Clarke would not know you well enough to tend to your happiness," Jon said, all in a rush. "That was why I said it—that is what I meant."

"Hmm," Lovett said, his mouth working. After a moment he nodded, almost to himself, and then looked up, silent, one eyebrow arched.

"Oh," Jon said. "Well, and the rest of it was—very rude, as well."

Lovett rolled his eyes, but he smiled, and nodded again. A casual observer might not not be certain that Jon had been forgiven, and yet Jon felt as if there was a sort of film that had lifted between them. Perhaps now they could once more see each other clearly.

"You have always been prone to speak rashly when roused," Lovett said, wry. He was slouching increasingly to one side in the armchair, and as he spoke he tucked a leg up underneath him. It was a silly thing to be so glad of, but he looked at home. Not lingering by the door. Not uncertain of his welcome. "Which is especially unfair because of course no one would believe it of you."

"Rich, coming from you," Jon said. He felt almost giddy with relief, for the way Lovett was looking at him, speaking of him, speaking _to_ him, was so blessedly normal. "It is a miracle that you find time to draw breath between paragraphs."

Lovett quirked his mouth and raised his shoulder. He was looking at Jon, steady and unfaltering, and it was only now that Jon realized just how little Lovett had done so since Jon's return home, and just how much Jon had missed it.

"Perhaps that is why we have been such good friends, all these years," Lovett said.

"Yes," Jon said, although the word felt wholly insufficient.

"And for many more," Lovett said. "No matter—where I go, or what life I come to live."

"Yes," Jon said again, and tried to make himself believe it, or at least sound as if he believed it. After all, why shouldn't it be true? And anyway, Lovett looked a little strained again, around the eyes. As if he needed to hear Jon say it, perhaps.

"You know that I've got to marry him," Lovett said abruptly. "It would be much easier if you—if you understood. Of course you will make a love match, but I—look, I am not resigning myself to misery. I don't love him, but he’s a decent man. Kind, and—and level-headed, which I’m told are good qualities in a husband. He isn’t trapping me, and I am not trapping him. We’re meeting on equal ground. It’s more than I could have… I know it isn't how you have ever thought of marriage, but it's how I must. You can see that, can't you? Some of us have to put aside our—our youthful notions of love. I have done it, and I am determined to be very happy. I would be so relieved if you could be happy for me, too."

"Lovett," Jon said, hoarse. He couldn't begin to list everything that was wrong this speech—why should Lovett think any man would not be grateful to have him? Why was Lovett behaving as if he were some undesirable old maid? But Lovett's last, plaintive sentence arrested him. He felt, for a moment, tears prickle just behind his eyes, and swallowed heavily. "Your happiness is all that I want. It is— _all_ that I want. And I am sure you know your own happiness best. I am sorry if I forgot that. I won't forget again."

"…Really, you had a plan to apologize, and I upended it? Do you mean to say that wasn't the apology you planned?" Lovett asked. "It should have been." Jon thought perhaps Lovett’s voice trembled, for an instant, amidst the exaggerated incredulity. He did not remark on it.

"I can carry on, if you like," Jon said. "I'm sure the ones I rehearsed will come back to me presently."

"Do you know, as much as I would usually encourage you to tell me how wonderful I am, and enumerate the ways you've wronged me, perhaps with a bit of bowing and scraping and groveling, I think this time I'd rather we left it there," Lovett said. "We have better things to do with our time, don't we? I think you mentioned something about a ride through the orchard."

He stood and looked at Jon, expectant.

“What, now?” Jon said. He looked over his shoulder out the window, where the sky was still gray and the rain, though not bucketing down, was certainly still falling. “It’s raining. You’ll hate it. You’ll complain about the damp, and the cold, and you’ll fret about the horses trudging through the mud—”

“None of which you’ve ever objected to before,” Lovett said. “Come along, Favreau.”

 

 

Lovett _did_ complain about the damp, and the cold, and he did express repeated worry for the horses, all with a decidedly performative tilt to his chin. Jon was too distracted to give Lovett the reaction he was seeking for several minutes, until Lovett exclaimed that _moss_ would start sprouting from his head before too long in this sort of damp. Then Jon could not help his laughter. Lovett, even through the rain, looked inordinately pleased with himself; and Jon thought that he would welcome any amount of dreary British weather if that were the result.

Jon did not ask questions, except once or twice to prompt Lovett to speak about last year’s new hybrid trees. There were plenty of questions he would like to ask about the timing of the wedding, and the locale, and what, precisely, Lovett’s plans were after. But he did not think he could ask them properly—as an interested and excited friend, and not a critic shouting from the gallery—so he would have to wait to ask them at all.

After all, Jon thought once he and Lovett had returned the horses to the stable and said their goodbyes, he was accustomed to doing favors for his friends. He had helped many a man—and a few women, too—compose important letters. He often paid down minor gambling debts or household bills on his friends’ behalf. He relished it when someone asked for help that he was equipped to give.

And what had Lovett asked for, if not a favor? _Be happy for me_. It wasn’t as simple as writing a letter, or writing a cheque; but it was far more important than either. Jon would just have to apply himself to the task.

At least he would have ample opportunity to practice, for before nightfall an invitation arrived for the Favreaus to call on the Lovetts the next afternoon, at three o’clock, for tea and conversation.

“Oh!” his mother said as she read it. She’d asked him to sit with her in the parlor and play the pianoforte while she opened the mail, but Jon abandoned playing and turned on the bench to face her. “Do you suppose they have an announcement?” She was beaming down at the card.

“I think that seems—very likely,” Jon said.

“What happy news,” Lady Favreau said. “Of course one mustn’t jump to conclusions, but if it is true!”

“Is it?” Jon said. “Happy news?”

His mother glanced up from the card, frowning, and Jon spread his hands wide.

“You know I care for Lovett very much,” he said. “I want him to be happy. I _want_ it to be happy news. I only—they have known each other for a _month_. Surely you would not expect me to know someone well enough to marry them after only a month?”

She did not reply right away, but the furrow between her brow smoothed away, and instead she regarded him with something soft and sympathetic in her eyes. “My dear,” she said, “you must see how your situations are different. I know you are a romantic, but you are not a fool.”

Jon shook his head. “A _month_ ,” he said again. “I know he cannot marry for love, not entirely—“

Lady Favreau cut him off, her voice still gentle.

“Your prospects are excellent,” she said, “your estate and future secured. It is my fondest hope that you will make a love match, and you have time, yet, to consider. The Lovetts do not have the same security. It falls to Jonathan to marry well, and he has done his duty admirably.”

Something in Jon yet protested. He could hardly bear the thought of Lovett trudging dutifully through all the years of his marriage, though he knew many people did so. But he couldn’t quite believe that Lovett’s situation was too urgent for him to take the proper time to consider the suitors he doubtless would have had, had he only made himself more widely known in society.

Perhaps his mother saw something of it on his face, for she said: “A month may not be long enough to fall in love, but it is long enough to test companionship. Jonathan and Mr. Clarke seem to be compatible; soon they may even be friends. And a love match may grow from friendship.”

“I am sure you are right,” Jon said, though he was far from it. “I wish I could share your certainty.”

“Maybe another meeting with Mr. Clarke will put your mind at ease,” she said.

“Maybe it will,” Jon agreed and resolved, privately, that it would. He would put aside his prejudices and view Mr. Clarke through his mother’s eyes, and Stephanie’s, and Lovett’s. And he would be able when the time came to wish them happy, and be entirely sincere.

 

 

The gathering at the Lovett estate the following afternoon was small, but the guests were clearly carefully selected. There were gentry from the neighboring towns, all well-placed in society. There was Miss Tanya Somanader, a friend of both Jon’s and Lovett’s; it was widely understood, though of course it could not be said, that she wrote columns for several of the nation’s most respected newspapers under a male pseudonym. And rounding out the party were Ira, the third baron Madison and Miss Ryan—both single, both well-connected, and both unrepentant gossips. It was a crowd well-suited for the announcement of a betrothal.

Jon was seated across from Miss Somanader, he in an armchair and she on the settee. The conversation rose and fell all around them as people formed pairs or trios, exchanging small talk about the weather and gossip about their shared acquaintances.

Normally Jon would relish the chance to quiz Miss Somanader about all the goings on in England and on the Continent, for he knew few people who were better informed than she was. Today, though, he suspected he was a poor conversationalist, absorbed as he was in watching Lovett and Clarke. They were stood across the room by the hearth, deep in conversation with Miss Ryan, and standing too far apart to risk their shoulders touching. But perhaps, Jon thought, that was not a sign that Clarke lacked affection. Perhaps it was a sign that Clarke had observed Lovett’s discomfort with _public_ affection.

Lovett rocked up on his tiptoes and said something—Jon could not hear him over the general chatter—and Miss Ryan laughed. Clarke did not laugh, but he did lean forward and say something, a very earnest expression on his face, and Lovett answered. If only Jon were closer—

“My Lord,” Miss Somanader said, and Jon blinked, and yanked his gaze back to her. She was smiling, a little wry. “Do you know, I have the strangest feeling I’m not holding your attention.”

Jon could feel himself flush, for it was the third time in as many weeks that he’d let his manners fall spectacularly by the wayside.

“I am sorry,” he said. “I am not usually so discourteous, but past good behavior does not excuse poor behavior in the present. I beg your pardon.”

“I grant it,” Miss Somanader said, smile still firmly in place, “on the grounds of your past good behavior, in fact. And on the belief that you will now pay _rapt_ attention while we speak about Wellington’s latest achievements.”

It was not hard to pay rapt attention to Miss Somanader, and Jon managed it for the next quarter of an hour. He doubtless could’ve done it for longer, except that Lady Lovett stood gracefully from her place on the sofa, and a gradual silence fell over the room.

“I would like to thank you all very much for joining us,” she said. “The pleasure of your company was more than enough reason to gather you all together. That we happen to have news to share would almost be immaterial, were it not such happy news. My son,” and here she inclined her head toward Lovett, who was still at the edge of the crowd, along with Clarke, “and Mr. Franklin Clarke are engaged to be married.”

There was a general murmur, if not of surprise, then certainly of congratulations, and then a second, expectant silence. Jon could be forgiven now for letting Lovett and Clarke draw his attention, and he watched as Clarke turned to Lovett and said something, too quiet for Jon to hear. Lovett shook his head, once, a short sharp little shake, and then Clarke drew him carefully in, one arm awkwardly wrapped around his shoulders, and said, “Thank you, friends, for your well wishes. We feel very fortunate.”

The crowd fell briefly silent again and then, when no one else came forward to speak, conversations sprang up once more around the room.

“Well,” Miss Somanader said, smiling, “I cannot say it was unexpected. But a good match, don’t you think?”

“I hope so,” Jon said truthfully. He was listening to Miss Somanader—he _was_ —but he was looking over her shoulder again, at the way Lovett held himself almost unnaturally still beneath Clarke’s arm.

He tried to think of his mother’s certainty. Companionship, she’d said. And there _was_ companionship there: Lovett was not ducking out from under Clarke’s hold, and Clarke was listening intently as Lovett spoke to Lord Madison, nodding in what looked, from here, to be all the right places. Companionship that would grow to friendship, and friendship that might grow to love.

Only when he tried to picture the two of them married, he simply could not square it with the way Clarke looked so earnest in the face of Lovett’s jokes, or the way Lovett never looked quite settled under Clarke’s touch.

Perhaps he just did not know enough of marriage. Or—what had Lovett said? _I know it isn’t how you have ever thought of marriage, but it’s how I must_.

For a moment Jon wanted to stand up and storm out and drag Lovett with him away from anything whatsoever that he _had_ to do. But the moment passed; Lovett, he reminded himself, believed he had made a good match. Jon had resolved to be happy.

Jon did stand, then, making his excuses to Miss Somanader, and moved through the gathered crowd until he reached Lovett and Clarke. He did not let his gaze linger on Clarke’s arm, or on the brief uncertain look that crossed Lovett’s face when he saw Jon arrive. Instead he reached out a hand for Clarke’s, and said, “Congratulations, Clarke, on your exceptional luck—indeed, congratulations to you both. It is my fondest wish that you will be—incandescently happy. Absurdly happy.”

Clarke took his hand, and shook it.

“That means a great deal, my lord,” he said. “I know how much your opinion matters to—to my fiancé.”

He stumbled over the word in a way that some might charming, as if he were not accustomed to saying it quite yet. Out of the corner of his eye, Jon thought he saw Lovett flush.

“What a coincidence,” Jon said. “His opinion matters a great deal to me, and I know how highly he thinks of you. I must beg your pardon for my behavior when we met, Mr. Clarke, and at the assembly rooms. I was—” he nearly stumbled, but it had to be said, “—I was unkind.”

“Not at all,” Clarke said, the picture of good manners, but Jon forged ahead.

“I certainly was,” he said. “I can see it for myself, now, and anyway I have been told so by—by someone I trust and rely on.”

An expression darted across Lovett’s face that Jon did not recognize at all. Jon stuttered to a stop, arrested by a feeling almost like loss. Lovett’s moods were so familiar to him that the uncertainty was alien. He was nearly stymied by it entirely, but no matter what Lovett thought of the attempt, he _did_ owe Clarke an apology.

“I will endeavor to prove to you that I do not always behave like quite such an ass,” he managed, which startled a laugh out of Clarke. Lovett did not join him, but Jon was too far into it now, and had to see it through. “It will be necessary if I am to earn your forgiveness, and your friendship, and I hope to do both.”

“As do I,” Clarke said. He seemed a little wrong-footed, but he was smiling, and Jon thought it looked genuine. “You make a very eloquent apology, Lord Favreau.”

“Thank you,” Jon said, and found he meant it. “I hope I will not need to make one to you again.”

“I am sure you will not,” Lovett said. He sounded almost hoarse, but then he shook his head, and cleared his throat, and there was a warm, teasing, almost grateful look in his eye when he said, “You love being complimented on your pretty manners far too much for that.”

“ _I_ do?” Jon demanded, but he was too pleased by the old familiar mockery to work up any real indignation.

The conversation soon swelled to include Miss Ryan, and Mr and Mrs Banfield, and Jon found he did not have much to contribute. Mrs Banfield, in particular—who was from London, herself, and whose nephew was apparently in the textile business—was anxious to hear about Clarke and Lovett’s plans. Would they spend much time in London? Might she see them when they were there? Would they care for an introduction to the Curtises, or perhaps the Huntingtons?

 _Yes_ , Clarke said, each and every time, and Jon clung to the promise he’d made to Lovett, and smiled.

 

 

If Jon had given it proper thought, he would have expected to see less of Lovett once he was engaged. After all, there were wedding preparations to be made, and, for that matter, estates to be joined, which, as Jon understood it, was a dense legal thicket even in amicable matches.

But in fact Lovett called on the Favreaus two days later, just after noon.

“This is the third time in as many visits that I arrive to find you in the library,” he said loudly from the doorway. “You’ll have to be careful, or people will accuse you of scholastic sensibilities.”

“Oh God, anything but that,” Jon said, his tone as flat as he could manage. Lovett came into the room and perched on the windowsill. He was grinning at Jon like the cat that got the canary, inordinately pleased to have dragged Jon into his little one-act comedy. Jon did not point out that he was an easy mark for such things, where Lovett was concerned; why rob him of such tremendous self-satisfaction?

“Exactly!” Lovett said. He bounced his heel against the wall. “How sad, they’ll say down in the village. The oldest Favreau boy has become a hermit. A martyr to his studies. I hear he bleeds ink. I hear he sleeps on sheets made entirely of Shakespeare’s first folio, and he dreams in Latin. _I_ hear—”

“—that he is writing a letter to Tommy, and will be able to participate in whatever mischief you have planned if you will only let him finish this paragraph?” Jon asked hopefully.

“That he has barricaded himself in the library and refuses to come out!” Lovett said, his voice fairly ringing with melodramatic woe. “What a tragedy. Jon, I’m here to _save_ you. You should be thanking me. You should be flinging yourself, weeping, into my arms.”

He threw his arms wide, as if to demonstrate.

Jon was tempted—not to fling himself into Lovett’s arms, but certainly to abandon his letter—if for no other reason than that Lovett barging cheerfully into Jon’s life and demanding attention he would’ve gotten anyway was so wonderfully familiar. But it was familiar, too, to give Lovett a sparring partner, so Jon bit back his smile and shook his head.

“I happen to pride myself on the consistency of my correspondence,” he said. “Unlike _some_ people I know—”

“No no, finish your letter,” Lovett interrupted, as if he was making some great concession. “I’ll help. I’ll dictate!” He adopted a tone like everyone’s least favorite history tutor, somehow sonorous and stuffy all at once, and went on: “‘Dearest Tommy: I am sequestered in the library. It has been three days since I ate or drank; I am sustained only by the written word. There is a dragon outside composed entirely of Greek treatises on philosophy, and he frightens off anyone who even thinks to rescue me. If only _someone_ was brave enough to _rush_ to my aid!’”

 _Lovett has just arrived,_ Jon wrote. _So as you might imagine I will need to finish this letter later_.

“I assume you’ve already slain the dragon,” Jon said, pushing back the chair and standing. “Do you have other plans for our afternoon?”

Lovett dropped neatly to the ground, and neatly back into his own voice.

“I thought a walk down to the river,” he said, “while the weather holds.”

 

 

It was one of those autumn days that felt almost sharp around the edges. The sky was blue, the clouds were scattered, and the air was cold. Jon was glad he'd reached for a scarf on the way out the door.

Lovett, of course, was not wearing any such additional layers. His coat looked like a good one—heavy wool—but even so he must be feeling the chill.

And indeed: "It's cold," Lovett said, rubbing his hands together. The words sounded like a complaint, and yet, Jon knew, Lovett was not complaining. Lovett took a kind of delight in extreme weather, even weather he hated. Jon had seen him come in from a torrential downpour more than once, his hair plastered to his skull and his clothes drenched through, and exclaim, "What horrible stuff!," as if he hadn't been out in it by choice all along.

Would he still be able to do such things, Jon wondered, in London?

He tried to imagine it now, as he watched Lovett pick his way carefully down the hillside toward the banks of the stream. Lovett in London was—not unimaginable. He'd be much closer to all sorts of spectacular theatres, and to lectures at the Royal Society. And there was something in Lovett that thrived in a busy place, provided the busyness was of his choosing. Lovett might be very happy in London. Perhaps he was already eager for the move.

Only—

Lovett, now halfway down the hill, looked over his shoulder.

"There is the careful selection of footholds," he said, "and then there is being a slowpoke. Do you really wish me to outpace you? Hurry up!"

Jon obediently set himself in motion again, Lovett before him in silhouette against the clear September sunshine.

They reached the banks of the river, and found a decently dry rock where they could sit and see the water. It really was cold, especially once they were still. Jon pressed their shoulders together. It was a risk, with Lovett: half the time he might jostle you, and complain about taking up a fair share of space. Today he hesitated for a minute, and Jon thought he might object, but instead he rested a little more of his weight against Jon's side and said, "Do you see the way the clouds are sort of—heaped up together?" He lifted his hand through the air, sketching the shape. "There is talk in the field of meteorology that such shapes have distinct meanings."

"Haven't—I don't know, sailors known that for hundreds of years?" Jon asked. "Farmers, too?"

"Well of course they have," Lovett said. "Half the meteorologists worth their salt are sailors. But now it'll all be written down, and evaluated—can you imagine what might come next? The shape of the clouds can tell us what the weather will be like in an hour, or three hours, but what about next week? Or next month? Or what about the weather elsewhere? The clouds you and I are watching now will be somewhere else by nightfall, after all."

He carried on, pointing out different clouds and tracing their structure. Jon listened, and nodded, and watched the clouds and Lovett's hands in near-equal measure. He thought there was just as much to be learned from one as from the other.

He could imagine Lovett in London, attending a performance or a scientific lecture. But he couldn't imagine what came after—home again, presumably, new ideas coiled all through him like a loaded spring. Home would be some briskly modern house, and Clarke would be there. Probably he would even listen while Lovett rattled his way through a retelling of the day's discoveries. But would Lovett fling his hands through the air, sketching the shape of some scientific phenomenon, or hit the table in his determination to make a point? Jon thought of the careful way Lovett held himself around Clarke, and tried to picture that: Lovett sitting neatly in some straight-backed chair, his posture upright and his hands still, feet on the ground, while he talked about clouds or canaries or electric currents, or one of a hundred other things.

That was not the happy future Lovett was envisioning, surely. There was nothing truly happy there.

"You are very quiet today," Lovett said suddenly. "I know I am a fascinating conversationalist, but I'm not so fascinating that you are required to listen in total silence." He was teasing, his mouth curling up to one side, but there was a genuine question beneath it.

"I am thinking about—marriage, I suppose," Jon said.

Lovett shifted a little on the rock, sitting up straighter. It took the press of shoulder away from Jon's side, and Jon felt the cold more sharply then he had even when they first stepped outside.

"Well, who is she?" Lovett asked.

"What?" Jon said. He turned, abandoning the clouds so that he could see Lovett’s face.

"This mysterious woman who has you thinking about marriage," Lovett said. The words were tumbling out one after another, like his mouth could not quite keep up with his mind. "You cannot have met her that long ago; you could not possibly contain such news. I think it would burst straight out of you if you tried. Did you meet her when you came to tea? Oh—Jon. Tell me you are not going to propose to Miss Somanader. She would laugh you out of the room, and I do not have time to sweep up the pieces of that debacle."

"Not—not me," Jon said, startled. "You are the only one here who is engaged, Lovett."

Lovett squinted at him, assessing.

"Well," he said after a moment's pause. His cheeks were pink with the cold. "I think it was a reasonable assumption. I don't know why you'd be sitting here in silence contemplating my marriage."

"Maybe because it is actually happening?" Jon said. "As opposed to my whirlwind courtship of Miss Somanader, which is the fantasy of a fevered mind. Are you feeling well?"

He reached out, as if to put a hand to Lovett's forehead, and Lovett batted him impatiently away.

"A reasonable assumption!" He said again. "You're extremely marriageable. Practically absurdly marriageable, everyone knows it. And you're," here he waved a hand through the air, "you. Don’t pretend you _aren’t_. Someday you'll walk into a crowded hall, and lock eyes with a beautiful, eligible young woman across the way, and by the time you've reached her you'll be falling to one knee. I'm surprised it hasn't happened already."

"I do not think—" Jon said, and took a breath. The thought of his own marriage seemed so distant it was almost absurd. Indeed, he felt as if they should be joking. There was still no reason for the certainty in Lovett’s tone to sting the way that it did. Jon tried to speak lightly, when he spoke again. "I cannot imagine knowing, so quickly."

"Really?" Lovett said. He raised an eyebrow. "Is that not how we became friends? Or am I meant to believe that my kidnap at age eight to come and see your toy soldiers was premeditated?"

"That was not kidnap," Jon said. They'd had this conversation what felt like hundreds of times over. He could hear the laughter in Lovett's voice coming long before it arrived.

"I was taken," Lovett said, "against my will, away to your sitting room, and forced to sit and watch a miniature military parade—"

"I asked if you wanted to come and play," Jon said, smiling a little helplessly.

"Friendship by kidnap," Lovett said, the way he always did, and clicked his tongue disapprovingly through his own smile. Now he sounded the way he should.

It was true that Jon had known, when he met Lovett, that they would mean something to each other. But he found that came much more easily to children, and anyway, asking a person to come and see your toys was not the same as asking a person to marry you. Jon had felt that sort of nigh on premonition only a few times as an adult, though he _had_ attached himself to Tommy immediately at Eton, certain they were meant to be friends. And, for that matter, he'd felt a similar affinity for Miss Somanader when they first met, and he had not crossed the room to propose to her.

"I do not think I will marry that way," he said at last, and maybe there was something final in his tone, because Lovett held up his hands, palms out, and said, "Fine, fine. You will marry however you see fit, of course."

The truth was that Jon did not think much about marriage at all, but he did not say that. After all, it was a luxury that he did not _have_ to think about it, and he did not want to point out the disparity between his situation and Lovett’s. Not when the whole afternoon up until now had felt so easy between them, like a thousand afternoons before.

“Do you suppose there are still frogs in the river?” he asked instead. Lovett looked at him, a twist to his mouth that was maybe supposed to be skeptical, but was instead clearly and eminently persuadable. “Come on, Lovett. Don’t you think we ought to find out? It’s a scientific pursuit!”

“Oh, yes, I cannot wait to write that letter to the Royal Society,” Lovett said. He bent down even as he spoke, and rolled up his breeches. “Dear sirs: I have discovered, after much strenuous aquatic exploration, that the river where Lord Favreau and I used to catch frogs when we were children does, in fact, still contain frogs. I eagerly await my knighthood.”

“Come on then,” Jon said, half-stepping, half-slipping down the incline. “Nobody’s going to make you a knight of the realm for sitting on a rock.”

He reached out, caught Lovett’s pale forearm in his hand, and tugged; Lovett squawked, indignant, and dug his nails into Jon’s wrist in retaliation, and they both went sliding the rest of the way down the bank.

Jon was splashed with mud up to the knee by the time he and Lovett went their separate ways an hour later, and his boots were fairly caked with the stuff. He would have to apologize profusely to his valet, he thought; and yet his step felt lighter then it had for nearly a month.

 

 

The next week was much the same. Lovett turned up on the Favreaus’ front steps more days than not with an invitation to go riding, or news from the Continent to discuss, or a book of especially bad poetry which, he claimed, must be read out loud in order to be suitably mocked.

“If you are going to read someone poetry,” Jon said, still gasping a little, trying to recover from his laughter, “shouldn’t it be your fiancé?” It felt like a strange, almost intrusive thing to ask: not intrusive on Lovett’s privacy so much as intrusive here, in the library, where they both seemed to be pretending that nothing had changed. Or would change.

Lovett snapped the book shut with a decisive thump, and abandoned it on an end table.

“If I read my _fiancé_ this particular poetry, I think he would renounce me entirely,” he said.

“What is it like, preparing for a wedding?” Jon asked. He did not want to keep talking about it, but he was uneasily aware that ignoring it was not the promise he’d made. Nor the mark of a good friend. “There must be invitations to address, and, I don’t know. Flowers to choose? Why have you got time to read poetry to anyone at all?”

“Oh, you know very well that Stephanie lives for that sort of thing,” Lovett said. “I wouldn’t dream of intruding on the invitations, or the flowers, or anything else. She’d throw me out on my ear. Anyway, it all seems very fussy, really. What shall we read next?”

 _But you like being in charge of fuss_ , Jon thought. _And you love flowers_.

He did not say it. Maybe he should have. Maybe he should have carried on the conversation, and coaxed Lovett into admitting his fondest hopes for the wedding, and the marriage. But—and surely he could admit it in the privacy of his own mind without doing any harm, or breaking any promises—he did not especially want to think about Lovett marrying Clarke and moving to London. No matter how he tried to take Lovett’s hopes to heart, whenever he tried to imagine Lovett happy in the city—in Clarke’s household—he could not make the picture come clear.

So instead he said, “You ought to read me something decent, to make up for that muck,” and was content to let Lovett read aloud from Descartes for nearly twenty minutes, even though Lovett elected to read from one of the books about mathematics and not philosophy.

It felt, on those languid afternoons, as if nothing had changed at all. It was almost like they were children again—or maybe, Jon thought, like Lovett was taking a kind of grand tour of old haunts and habits, before he left for London.

And perhaps the rest of the month might have passed that way; only on Thursday, the news arrived that Lord Madison was hosting a ball, a last hurrah before he departed for the season, and both the Favreaus and the Lovetts were invited.

 

 

Lord Madison's estate was deceptive, for as you pulled up the drive, it looked stately but sedate, the masonry and the plantings all quite traditional. The moment you stepped through the front doors, it was an entirely different story.

"Has he had these rooms painted _again_?" Lady Favreau asked, looking around with interest at the jewel-toned walls.

"Yes, my lady," the butler said. "And the ceiling."

The ceiling, Jon discovered when he craned his neck, was covered in a riotous tropical print, all edged in gold.

"He does make himself at home," Lady Favreau said, smiling. She and Jon's father set off, arm-in-arm, into the ballroom, and Jon and Andy followed.

The place was crowded, buzzing with conversation and music and peals of laughter. Small knots of people were conversing around the edges of the room, serving as a kind of informal boundary for the dance floor. Everyone was in the liveliest of spirits, for an event of this size, and everything about it all the go, was hosted only rarely in Dorset, and would be happily discussed for months to come.

Jon saw a great many guests he knew, though none of them well. Lord Madison’s friends were a more fashionable set than Jon’s on the whole. Perhaps these were the people that would form Lovett’s social circle in London.

“Are you sulking?” Andy demanded. Jon looked over to find Andy frowning at him, one hand on his hip. “What have you got to sulk about? And anyway, how _can_ you sulk, in a room like this?”

That was a fair point. A dour mood did not suit the decor: here, too, were rich colors and the glimmer of gold, and there were statues and other bits of art scattered throughout.

“I’m not sulking,” Jon said, and determined to make it true. It was silly to think as if _he_ would not still be part of Lovett’s social circle. They would not cease being friends just because Lovett was married, or living in London.

“Well, come on then,” Andy said. “I’m sure there are cards to play. Or beautiful women to talk to, for that matter! And none of them will talk to _me_ if you’re over here brooding. They’ll all want to come cheer you up. You are a thorn in my side, you know.”

“Your suffering is without end,” Jon agreed, and followed Andy to see what sort of company they might find.

He did end up playing several rounds of whist, and then cribbage. He lost enough money at the latter that he ruefully excused himself and went back to the ballroom, where there was a lively country dance occurring. He scanned the lines of partners, looking for familiar faces, but there was far too much busy motion for him to pick anyone out.

“It always looks so charming when you aren’t _doing_ it,” someone said at his elbow. Jon turned and found himself face-to-face with Mr. Louis Virtel: a dear friend of Lord Madison’s and, Jon had found on more than one occasion, an engaging conversationalist. “And then of course when you’re in the middle of it you’re just exhausted.”

“The sets are tiring, it’s true,” Jon agreed. “I might have kept to the card room, only I was losing too many bets.”

“Ah,” Mr. Virtel said, with a dramatic flourish. “There, you risk losing your money, and here, you risk losing your heart. We are surrounded by peril!”

“A ball is a very dangerous place,” Jon agreed.

Mr. Virtel snickered, and said, “Well, come on. Indulge me. What is the gossip? Who out there has found true love?” He gestured toward the center of the room, and Jon once again set his eye to the dancers.

He spotted Miss Ryan, who seemed to have outpaced the young man she was dancing with. He opened his mouth to make some comment about it, and then saw, next to her, Clarke and Lovett.

Mr. Virtel followed his gaze, and hmm-ed, tapping his chin with his finger.

“They _do_ seem to be well-matched, don’t they?” he asked. “And Lord Lovett seems more confident in his steps than I have ever seen him.”

The music ended with a flourish, and the partners bowed to each other and made their way off of the floor.

“Lord Lovett!” Virtel called across the room, and Lovett turned. Virtel raised his hand, beckoning. Jon was struck by a memory of the last time he’d seen Lovett like this—flushed, a little disheveled, fresh from a dance with his fiancé—and what a fool he’d made of himself then. He almost made some excuse to escape back to the card rooms, only even as he was searching for the right words Lovett was approaching, and then he’d arrived, and Jon could not think of any polite lie Lovett would not see straight through.

“Hello, Louis,” Lovett said. “Hello, Jon.” He was smiling at them both, and Jon tried to soothe himself: there was no reason he should shout at Lovett now, or be shouted at. That was all resolved.

“Hello, Lovett!” Virtel said. “I was just remarking to Lord Favreau that your dancing is much improved. I hardly even saw you roll your eyes.”

“Oh, well, betrothal works wonders,” Lovett said, and then _did_ roll his eyes, which made Virtel laugh outright.

“Are you laughing at me, Virtel?” Lovett demanded. “Why, you would not _believe_ how accomplished I have become—”

“Not as accomplished as all that,” Jon said, and did not bother holding back his smile when Lovett turned on him.

“Do you impugn my honor?” he exclaimed, like he was on the stage.

“I merely point out,” Jon said, trying to sound solemn, “that you stepped on Mr. Clarke’s foot at least twice during the country dance.”

He did not know if Lovett _had,_ but it seemed likely enough; and with the way Lovett puffed up, giggling and trying not to, Jon thought he hadn’t missed the mark by much.

“How _dare_ you, sir?” Lovett, and he _was_ laughing, now. “I must—I must defend myself against these claims. I request—nay, I de _mand_ —that you dance the next set with me, and we shall see who steps on whose feet.”

“Oh, shall we?” Jon said.

There was music stirring again, and he reached out for Lovett’s arm.

“Guard your toes,” Virtel said in a loud stage whisper; but Lovett merely huffed, all ginned-up indignation, and led Jon out onto the floor.

It took Jon a moment to realize the musicians were cueing up a waltz.  

It took Lovett a moment, too. Jon watched as he glanced sidelong across the floor, eyeing their fellow dancers; cocked his head to one side, as if better to hear the music; and seemed suddenly to realize what would be required of him. An unreadable look passed across his face before he caught Jon’s eyes and said, “Some champagne first, then? And a rest, and _then_ you will see how accomplished I’ve become.” His tone was light; he was already casting an eye back into the crowd, as if confident that Jon would agree.

“You promised me this dance,” Jon said mildly. It was strangely satisfying to watch Lovett’s eyes dart back, and to watch calm certainty give way to annoyance.

“This dance or the next,” Lovett said. “What does it matter?”

“What does it matter to you?” Jon countered. “You’ve danced it before.” The memory of Lovett waltzing with Clarke sprang readily to mind, as if it had been eagerly awaiting the opportunity to present itself once more. _Not this_ , he’d thought at the time; _not here_ , as he watched Clarke draw Lovett into his arms, faces close enough that he could, as they danced, have been whispering confidences Jon would never hear or know. If he were kind, perhaps he would let it go now. He would follow his own advice: don’t make Lovett do what discomfits him. Accede; drink champagne; come back later and dance an unobjectionable minuet.

Instead, when Lovett scowled in response, Jon merely said, “Unless you feel it would be improper to waltz with anyone but your fiance?”

“Good God!” Lovett said explosively.

“If your scruples do prevent you from standing up with me, by all means—”

“They certainly do not,” Lovett said. He pulled such a repulsed face that Jon wished he could capture it in a portrait, to show anyone who might ask for an explanation of Lovett: his personality, his character. _Here,_ Jon could say. _Here it is_. Someday, he thought with a pang, maybe that someone would be himself—maybe Lovett truly would, once he’d moved to London, become so distant and remote a memory that Jon would be the one struggling to remember how he’d looked when he smiled, when he scowled.

He shoved the thought ruthlessly away, and said instead, “Ah. Then perhaps you fear your skills will not prove all you promised?”

“My skills are not—” Lovett began, and cut himself off as the true introduction to the dance swelled. Jon bowed once and rose to offer his hand. “I’m merely less familiar,” Lovett said instead, “with the steps,” and, gingerly proffering his own hand, allowed himself to be drawn into Jon’s arms.

Jon was an indifferent dancer at best; he always had been. He learned new dances dutifully as they filtered out to the countryside, and always stood up willingly when it was expected or required. But, for all that he teased Lovett, he was hardly so skilled that he hadn’t stepped on a toe or two in his day, and he was generally happy enough to clap at the end of a set and retire to a balcony with Lovett to drink champagne and debate the newest developments out of Parliament.

Of all the sets he could have danced with Lovett, the waltz was hardly the most difficult.

It was strange, though.

“My toes,” Jon remarked after a quiet minute, “are all, thus far, intact. I may yet be convinced that you have become a perfectly passable partner. ”

“Unfettered compliments! What a silver tongue you have,” Lovett said. His voice was low and close, which shouldn’t have been startling—they had been dancing practically cheek to cheek for nearly half a minute. Lovett’s hand was light on Jon’s waist, so light Jon could barely feel it.

“To be honest, I’m surprised you bothered to learn this particular dance,” Jon said. He flexed his fingers a little against Lovett’s side, and let go to turn him once, in time with the other dancers, and draw him back in. Lovett almost stumbled—didn’t. He didn’t speak through the next few steps, brow furrowed in concentration, eyes on his feet, and when he did return his gaze to Jon, said only, “Why?”

“Well,” Jon said, wrong-footed. “You’re hardly modish—and you hate dancing.”

“I don’t hate it,” Lovett said. This time, when Jon spun him, he stayed quite steady, and glanced mulishly up from under his eyelashes after.

“Yes,” Jon said wryly—the room was beginning to feel quite hot—“very well done.”

“Thank you,” Lovett said.

“But you do.”

“What?”

“Hate dancing.”

“I don’t—”

“You’ve said as much,” Jon told him, and Lovett snorted.

“When will you learn not to listen when I speak nonsense?”

“Never,” Jon said truthfully, but Lovett made no reply, merely shrugging and shifting in Jon’s grip. He was a stiff dancer—that _alone_ proved Jon’s point, not that it seemed worth pressing him further. The last thing Jon wanted, he reminded himself, was to fight with Lovett _again_ —not now. Not with so little time left. “I suppose,” Jon said, with this in mind, “I have noticed. This past month…”

“Yes?” Lovett said, a little sharply.

“That you have enjoyed it more,” Jon said, and tightened his hand reassuringly against Lovett’s as they spun round the far corner of the room again. “That’s all.”

Lovett cleared his throat. He was flushed from exertion; he had, Jon reflected, danced two sets in a row now, with no break between. “I believe,” Lovett said, and shook his head, then bungled a turn almost immediately. “Oh, damn—”

“Minor error,” Jon said. Lovett’s misstep had knocked him close, and he’d clutched at Jon’s waist for balance. Jon, lest Lovett trip again, tightened his own grip in return, and guided him through the next spin. “You believe?”

“I—? Oh,” Lovett said. He was staring fixedly over one of Jon’s shoulders. “I believe,” he said, breathless from the near-fall, “that in London, it is expected. That is to say, one is expected…”

“Of course,” Jon said.

“If I cannot waltz,” Lovett said, more lightly, “I may be ostracized from polite society entirely. I may be called an incurable country bumpkin. My own husband may banish me to the Continent, to live in isolation, in a remote castle, and say to anyone who inquires as to my whereabouts, ‘Who, me? Marry a man who can’t even _waltz?_ I never would, and never have—’”

“Mr. Clarke owns a castle?” Jon inquired skeptically.

“Certainly he could purchase one if he cared to,” Lovett said, and fell silent, focusing on his feet again. His cheek was very pink, and very close. _It’s all right if you don’t enjoy dancing. You don’t have to. No one should make you do it,_ Jon wanted to tell him, ruthlessly ignoring the voice which reminded him that he, in fact, had done so. _You shouldn’t ever have to do anything you don’t want._

Lovett, he suspected, would not care to hear it. He had had enough of Jon telling him what was all right, or what he should or shouldn’t have to do—he’d made that much clear. Jon could respect that. He was doing his best to respect it. Still, he was experiencing the strong temptation to dance Lovett right off the floor and keeping dancing him, to dance him far away, to—

 _To where?_ he asked himself irritably. _You’re being damnably fanciful._ He felt so unsettled he almost couldn’t recognize his own mind. He hadn’t, he thought suddenly, danced with Lovett since they were children learning all the old-fashioned country dances for the very first time, in anticipation not even of _dancing_ at a ball—merely of being permitted to attend, and watch everyone else take to the floor. Maybe that’s what was making him feel so childish right now.

Another spin. Lovett’s gloved hand was light in Jon’s. He seemed, at least when he concentrated, to have really and truly gotten the hang of it; but this time he didn’t smirk, or tip his chin as if to say, smugly, _so? Have I not done well_? There was a distant and distracted look on his face.

 _Come back_ , Jon wanted to say. But he hadn’t _gone_ anywhere. He was here, flesh and blood, in Jon’s arms, for a little while longer.

Regardless of its morality or immorality, Jon thought, staring at one dark curl escaping from behind the curve of Lovett’s ear, the waltz was certainly a _silly_ dance. Whose idea had it been to wait until halfway through the night, when everybody had enjoyed two or three glasses of fine champagne, and then make them dance in circles and circles and circles until their heads were spinning? _Jon’s_ head was spinning, at least.

“Lovett,” he said.

“Mm?”

“Are your feet so interesting?” Jon said when Lovett didn’t look up.

“You forget,” Lovett said, “I am defending my honor, and have already faltered once.” And he did not glance up again.

A few seconds later, the musicians played a final note, which disappeared into a round of polite applause. Lovett dropped his arms almost immediately in his hurry to clap—so quickly that Jon found himself almost shocked at the loss, and lowered his own arm clumsily as Lovett stepped backwards.

“Well?”

“Well—what?” Jon repeated. He had managed, somehow, to miss the clapping completely; he flexed his hand at his side, and shook his head to clear it.

“I know,” Lovett said in a blithe, determined tone, “I _did_ stumble the once—but admit it—your feet are undamaged.”

“…I admit it,” Jon said. His tongue felt too big for his mouth; it was strangely hard to speak. “Readily do I admit it,” he said, forging forward regardless. “I think—with perhaps a touch more practice—”

“Judas,” Lovett sniped, straightening his cravat with a showy frown.

“—you will be quite the talk of the town,” Jon said. “When…in London, I mean.”

Lovett snorted. “I’m not even the talk of _this_ town,” he said. It was hardly true: his courtship had been all anyone could discuss for months. Jon knew _that_ all too well; he would have appreciated the opportunity to escape the topic now and again. They’d begun to move off the dance floor together. Lovett was moving faster than Jon, who was following a little vaguely in his wake, his head still spinning from the dance. “I’m hardly entertaining the notion that I’ll be a tastemaker, or even an object of general interest. Let Mr. Brummell set tongues wagging with his waltzes; I merely said I wouldn’t damage your toes, and I _didn’t_ , and hopefully shan’t in London, either.”

“If you _wanted_ to be a tastemaker—” Jon began.

Lovett turned a fond but scathing look on him. “Incorrigible,” he said, almost too low to hear, so that Jon had to sway towards him. “Will you—can you believe _I_ must ask it from _you_?—refrain from telling me fairy-stories?”

“I’m only saying,” Jon said, and realized abruptly that he hadn’t the slightest idea. “Just that—I do think if you set your mind to it, Lovett, you could turn the town completely upside down.” Then, almost unable to bear the way Lovett was frowning intently at him: “Your cravat—”

Lovett had adjusted it badly; it was still quite lopsided. As Jon reached out to twitch it into place, Lovett went very still. His face was still flushed, Jon noted, his eyes bright from the exercise, and his curls were a mess, but he looked—for all that—

“ _Jon_ ,” came a sharp address from behind.

Jon let his hand fall and turned. Stephanie, skirt in hand, was sweeping up to them.

“Lady Standish,” Jon said. In private, he and Steph had long been on the most familiar terms; in public, however, he made an effort at polite address. “Did you observe your brother’s waltz? I’m ashamed to say he has proven all his detractors wrong, myself included, and achieved a most unobjectionable performance.”

“Did I observe—?” Stephanie looked almost disbelieving, then sighed. “I saw, yes. I was—most astonished. Jon,” she added after a pause. There was something almost quelling in her voice, and Jon wondered what he had done wrong, but when he followed the line of her gaze, he found it was Lovett she was addressing. “May I speak with you?”

Jon thought Lovett might tease her for the rather solemn way she put it, or beg off conversation in favor of drink and a rest. Instead, he made no response at all, until Stephanie said, “Please?” and, with a harsh sigh, Lovett relented.

“Lead the way,” he said, mouth twisted up in a wry and joyless smile. He nodded to Jon, and followed her from the room.

Jon watched them go, an uneasy feeling settling in the pit of his stomach. He wanted childishly to race after them, to protest that whatever Steph might wish to tell Lovett, she could certainly tell Jon as well—but of course, he reminded himself carefully, it was not so. There—he could say it. They were _not_ children anymore; Lovett must be permitted to have his own life, to make his own decisions. And to receive his own scoldings, if Jon had read Stephanie’s face correctly, though he knew not what Lovett had done to draw censure.

Jon could not always be there. He _would_ not always be there.

The ache in his stomach intensified. He was still staring at the doorway on the far side of the room. Determinedly, he returned his attention to the ballroom.

And yet—even in the crowded room, with laughter ringing out from all sides, surrounded by the flutter of skirts and the happy din of conversation—Jon felt suddenly alone. Or alone, at least, in his ambition to avoid further dancing. He found himself with a partner for the following quadrille, though he did not feel his enthusiasm quite matched the steps. Thereafter, he excused himself from dancing for the remainder of the evening, and passed the time observing his fellow guests instead.

At first he kept an eye out for Lovett, thinking they might escape to some balcony as they had done at so many parties before. Perhaps Lovett would emerge from his conversation prepared to spill all, with complaints to which Jon could lend an ear. Instead, Lovett returned to the ballroom without fanfare. By the time Jon noticed him, he was absorbed in conversation across the room as if he’d never left. It was strange to see; Lovett had never been enamored of small talk. But then he had never been enamored of the waltz, either. And Jon had no chance to ask what had happened at all, for somehow, no matter how many steps Jon managed to take towards him, stopping at intervals to suffer his own bouts of small talk, Lovett managed to take an equal number of steps in some other direction. Their paths did not cross again.

It was after midnight, and a hearty supper, when the Favreau carriage departed for home. Jon’s parents and his brother made lively conversation, but Jon could not help the way his thoughts lingered on Lovett dancing, and bowing, and mingling with strangers. Forming himself into the sort of person that might be acceptable to London society.

Jon knew his feelings on the matter were not welcome, and yet he rankled at the thought of Lovett constraining himself to fit any particular mold. He could not say as much: he had already tried, once, and failed miserably, with near-disastrous consequences. He would not risk it again.

No, he had promised not to interfere, and he would not. But he could at least give Lovett every opportunity to be thoroughly himself before he left for London—and, selfishly, if Jon’s presence was what provided those opportunities, then they would also be chances for Jon to soak up Lovett’s company in the last month before his marriage.

 

 

There should have been just such a chance the next morning, for Lovett had mentioned a few days earlier that he had new correspondence from a friend who served in Parliament, and he and Jon had planned to read it over together. But morning slipped away, and by the time Jon had finished his lunch there was still no sign of Lovett.

It would not be the first time Lovett had been absorbed by a book, or some other bit of business, and failed to keep an informal appointment. Jon was not put off by it; he simply resolved to keep it on Lovett’s behalf, and set off for the Lovett estate by carriage that afternoon.

He was informed at the door that Lovett could be found in his study, which confirmed Jon’s suspicion that Lovett was holed up with some new text on politics or philosophy. When he knocked, however, he did not receive the usual absent, “Come in!” Instead, there came a muffled thud from inside the room, and a cry of, “Stephanie, I have _told_ you, if you want me to actually accomplish anything, you’re going to have to leave me to it.”

“Not Stephanie,” Jon said as he came through the door. Whatever he might have said next dissolved in his throat at the sight of the chaos that greeted him. Lovett’s study was in considerable disarray. His books had been removed from their shelves and stacked haphazardly on the floor, his papers strewn across the desk—its drawers were all flung wide, and empty—and open cases and trunks scattered at random intervals across the room.

“Oh,” Lovett said. He himself was sitting on the rug in the midst of the mess. He blinked up at Jon for a moment and then returned determinedly back to the task before him, which was, it seemed, sorting a series of books into three or four piles. What the piles signified, Jon could not possibly say.

There was something disorienting about seeing Lovett’s rooms this way. It was as if he were being uprooted. Jon had known, intellectually, that Lovett would have to pack and move his possessions at some stage, but the sight of it was something else altogether. He fought back the urge to suggest that surely _some_ of Lovett’s things should stay here. His favorite books, so he could read them when he returned to visit, or the paintings he was particularly fond of. But of course, that was ridiculous: Lovett would spend his time in London, and his things must spend their time there, too. Jon tried to put the matter aside; he had meant to see as much of Lovett as he could while Lovett was still in Dorset, and here Lovett was.

“We had an appointment, you know,” he said lightly. “I waited all morning. Did you forget about me?”

Lovett laughed, and dropped some sort of encyclopedia decisively into a nearby trunk.

“Very funny,” he said. “The height of hilarity, to suggest—you are a true wit.”

“I confess it may not be my best work,” Jon said. “I only had the carriage ride over to think of it. What are you doing? Can I help?”  

“I think it is quite clear that I am packing,” Lovett said, but then gestured resignedly to a spot on the rug across from him and added, “Have a seat, if you’re so eager.”

Jon sat. He pulled a stack of books toward himself. “Do you have some particular system you’re following?” he asked.

“Not especially particular,” Lovett said. There was another thud; more books in the trunk. “The ones you’ve chosen are the ones that are not coming with me.”

“Staying here?” Jon asked. That made some sense—here was a collection of fairy-stories that Lovett had read and expounded on when they were both much younger, and here a children’s scientific primer. They were childhood keepsakes; they should stay here, in Lovett’s family home.

“If my parents want them, I suppose,” Lovett said. “But no, I’m giving them away.”

Jon glanced up sharply from the books and found that Lovett was not even looking at him—he was thumbing through some leather-bound volume, his head bowed.

“Lovett,” he said. “You cannot mean _that_.”

Lovett did look up, then, a puzzled slant to his eyebrows.

“I certainly can,” he said. “Out of all the things I might not mean, that is the one you call into question? It makes sense to give away the things I’ve outgrown.”

“But you _haven’t_ ,” Jon said and then, hastily, “I don’t mean—I mean, of course you have outgrown fairy-stories, but don’t they have—I don’t know. Sentimental value?”

Lovett shrugged and set the book in his hands into the trunk.

“It’s a practical matter, really,” he said. “They won’t all fit in Mr. Clarke’s library, even when it is _our_ library, and they’ll only gather dust here.”

“Dusty or not, they are _yours_ ,” Jon said. “They ought to stay yours.”

He was not entirely sure where his conviction came from. He was still guarding _Gulliver’s Travels_ in his lap, as if Lovett might seize it at any moment and throw it into the fire.

Lovett huffed out a short sharp breath. “You can’t keep anything forever, Jon. And it is silly to try, especially in the case of books that are better off being read somewhere.”

“But—” Jon said. He did not know where to begin: of course there were things that you could keep forever, and _should_ keep forever, if they were precious to you. And surely Lovett must consider _some_ thing precious, even if not these books.

Before he could get his thoughts in order, Lovett stood abruptly and moved to the desk.

“If you are only here to give me orders about my own possessions, you may go,” he said. Jon half-laughed before he recognized that there was something steely in Lovett’s tone.

“Lovett—I am not giving you orders,” he said. He stood, too, and left the books behind. “I only thought—”

“That your direction about my books should supersede mine?” Lovett asked. He was searching through the papers on the desk, fitfully bundling chosen sets together. “I am not so eager for your opinions as all _that_.”

“I did not claim you were,” Jon said, though the admonishment stung. The opinions he offered were not indispensable, maybe, but they were the opinions of a trusted friend. That had always counted for something before, even when Lovett was annoyed with him.

“No?” Lovett said. “No, of course not, what am I thinking, you would never say as much.” He turned from the desk, worn pages clutched in his hands. Jon could not see what they were—receipts, perhaps, or letters. Whatever they were, Lovett bent and stuffed them into a case, and shut it again, all in a flurry. Jon did not know where the conversation had gone wrong.

“I would not say it because I do not think it,” Jon said. “I am at least as eager for your opinions as you are eager for mine. Lovett, what—”

“Why are you here?” Lovett demanded. He took a half-step as if he might find some other poor unsuspecting objects to pack away at high speed, and then seemed to think better of it. “It is—you know perfectly well it is bad etiquette to call unannounced.”

Jon stared at him. Lovett winced, and waved a hand. “Never mind,” he said, but Jon couldn’t help it.

“It has not been bad etiquette between us since we were eight years old,” he said. He could hear the scrape in his own voice, and tried to swallow it back.

“I _know_ ,” Lovett said. “I said never mind, never mind it, Jonathan.”

“Lovett, tell me what I’ve _done_ ,” Jon said. It was clear as day that he had made Lovett angry and it could not simply be the books. They had disagreed far more strongly over the course of their friendship.

Lovett threw up his hands.

“Oh, are you going to keep worrying away at it?” he said, all notes of reconciliation gone. “How many allowances am I expected to make for you, Lord Favreau?” He offered Jon’s title in a scathing tone, and it was all it took to set Jon reeling again.

“Allowances?” he echoed.

“I do not know what you think you are entitled to from me,” Lovett said, snide, “but betrothal makes a man very busy, and I cannot spare the time to entertain you this afternoon.” He turned back to the desk.

Jon stared at the line of his back. He could not believe that Lovett meant even half of what he had just said—Jon did not think himself entitled to anything at all from Lovett, and Lovett had never accused him of it before. Surely if this had been rankling over the course of twenty years of friendship, Lovett would have _said_ something.

“I can see that I have made you angry,” he tried.

“I really do not think I could have dismissed you more clearly,” Lovett said. “Do you need an excuse? Will that soothe your pride? You had better go home and prepare for the Everetts’ supper party tonight.”

Whatever else was happening beneath the surface, it would not be resolved now: Lovett was in a foul mood, and his words were cutting deep. Jon found himself hoping, in fact, that they were cutting deeper than Lovett realized or intended. The best thing to do was to retreat, and regroup, and give them both a chance to lick their wounds. Lovett was offering him a chance to do that, at least.

“Yes,” he said, “I suppose I had.”

There did not seem to be much else to say. He showed himself out.

 

 

Jon rode home with his thoughts in such a rattle that he might easily have made it to the coast before noticing his surroundings, had not the horses known their own way. Given their head, they returned him safely to the manor, where he spent the afternoon in a state of restless upset he’d rarely experienced before. He tried to attend to some business matters—made a horrible mess of his books—closed them and left the work for another day. He picked up Southey’s _Life of Nelson_ and spent almost an hour with his head bent, reading diligently in the parlor, before admitting to himself that not a single word had registered and casting it aside. He started a letter to Tommy, a letter to Lord Pfeiffer, a letter to Miss Mastromonaco, and stalled a paragraph into each. By the third of these, he recognized that his script was verging shamefully on illegibility, and that he was like to produce nothing but nonsense if he kept trying to write with his mind so disordered and his hand so unsteady.

He set all the letters aside.

Then, after a protracted minute of staring at the wall before him, he moved abruptly to lay out a clean sheet of paper, and to dip his pen again in the inkwell.

 _Lovett_ , he wrote. Then, scratching it out, _Lord Lovett_. He stared down at the page, stomach roiling, and crossed out the _Lord_. In his head, he could hear Lovett’s voice, harsh as it had been earlier that day: _it is bad etiquette to address a peer so informally._ Damn him, though—Jon had never once stood on formal terms with Lovett, and the idea of starting now…

He shook his head and firmed his jaw to his task.

_Lovett,_

_I seem always to be apologizing to you these days. I’m sorry; I’m sure the fault is my own. ~~I’m trying to be~~ ~~I know I’ve been~~ I would consider it a great kindness if you’d forgive me. You are my dearest friend, and if I have not been all you deserve of late, please permit me to trade on past performance, and to assure you that I will do better. _

_Of course you should do exactly as you like with your own books. I only objected because—_

Jon sat for so long trying to finish the sentence that an inkblot bloomed hugely on the page where his pen rested.

_I only objected because—_

He shouldn’t try to explain himself, or make excuses. He knew he shouldn’t.

 _I only objected because they they seem to me so much a part of you,_ he finished slowly. _I cannot imagine you without them, or them without you. ~~I will be sad~~ ~~Everything seems to be ending~~ I am scared to lose them. _

He stared down at the words.

_I am scared to lose you._

_Ah_ , he thought, almost politely, and set this fourth letter aside as well, then took himself downstairs to see if his mother had any tasks to set him, to last the rest of the afternoon.

 

 

Jon would have liked nothing more than to skip the Everetts’ damn supper party. He’d rarely been less in the mood for polite socialization. He could not, however, have justified the last minute absence; and in any case, he retained some small hope that _Lovett_ would not call off, and that Jon might perhaps find a chance that evening to draw him aside and—explain himself. No—apologize. No—

He was becoming, he thought, staring out the carriage window as his family chattered around him, very tired of apologizing to Lovett.

No again—that was wrong. That was putting it wrong. The carriage hit an especially rutted patch of road and Jon’s stomach rolled. He was tired of doing things that made apologizing necessary. He was tired of misspeaking, misstepping—of somehow, without meaning to, managing constantly to mistreat the one person who—the person who—

“Lord, Jon, I hope you’re not planning to sit so quiet all evening,” Andy said. “And wearing that face—!”

“Hush,” Jon’s mother said. She was looking at Jon very kindly and knowingly: the kind of look you gave a child not grown enough yet to understand the cause of his own discomfort. He felt no more than eleven under her gaze. You can’t possibly understand, he wanted to protest, but bit his tongue. “I have no reason to doubt,” his mother went on, “that your brother will be a perfectly polite and pleasant supper guest. You, on the other hand…”

Andy snorted. “I’ve never been half so much trouble as Jon, for I have the good sense not to follow Lovett, complacent as a lamb, into every scrap of mischief he decides to make—”

“Andrew,” Jon’s mother said reprovingly.

Jon said nothing. He felt hot and cold all over.

“Well, I _do_ ,” Andy said, plucking at his cuffs. “Anyway, it doesn’t signify. I only meant that if Jon mopes all night for no reason, I’ll never hear the end of it from any young lady in the county. They fret over him so; I cannot begin to say why.”

“I will endeavor,” Jon said finally, “to spare you such a fate.”

“Do,” Andy said agreeably, and prattled happily about cockfighting all the rest of the way to the Everetts’.

Lovett, of course, was not in attendance.

Jon, whatever he’d hoped, was unsurprised. When Lovett was in bad humor, no force on Earth, least of all social obligation, could compel him to engage with the world at large. Jon watched from a corner of the parlor as the Lovetts arrived, Stephanie and her husband in tow, and watched also as, presumably, they made Lovett’s excuses for him.

“Lovett’s not even here to drag you out of this funk?” Andy said, dismayed, following Jon’s gaze. “I’m doomed. No gossip will spare the opportunity to question me about your malaise for a full month to come.”

“I’m in perfectly good spirits,” Jon told him, clearing his throat at the sound of his own voice, strangely flat.  

“And Napoleon is six foot ten,” Andy said, and left Jon to his solitary musings.

Despite his promise to Andy, Jon was a poor conversationalist in the half hour preceding the meal. It was a relief when supper was announced, and the party moved into the dining room, where Jon found himself seated next to Stephanie. At least if she noticed his usual enthusiasm was dimmed, she would not ask Andy any probing questions about malaise. In fact, he realized as the soup was served, she probably knew the cause of it all—she and Lovett might well have discussed Jon’s visit, and whatever Jon’s true transgression had been in Lovett’s eyes, they might have discussed that too. Jon was half-tempted to ask for her advice on the matter, and half-tempted to crawl under the table where he could not be forced to confront his own behavior.

In the end he struck a compromise, and asked her how the wedding preparations were coming.

“Oh,” she said, and hiccuped a little laugh. “They are coming, I suppose. You would think that having undertaken my _own_ wedding just last year, I might be given some respite, but apparently that was not meant to be.”

“It does all sound very absorbing,” Jon said. “I suppose it leaves you time for little else. But at least you enjoy it.”

Stephanie gave him a puzzled look over her spoonful of spring soup.

“I do not dislike it,” she said. “But ‘enjoy’ is a strong word, Lord Favreau.”

“Is it?” Jon said. How was it that he was floundering here, too? After a lifetime of easy conversation, had he somehow lost the knack entirely in the last month and a half? “Lovett gave me to understand that you relished the opportunity.”

“ _Did_ he,” Stephanie scoffed. “Is that what he has been telling you? No wonder you have aided and abetted him these last few weeks.”

“And what rank criminality have I been supporting?” Jon asked, feeling carefully for firmer ground. It was not uncommon for Stephanie to be exasperated with Lovett, and with Jon by extension, and so this ought to have been a well-tread path. And yet there was something about the way Stephanie spoke, or perhaps the angle of her jaw, that warned him off.

“You know full well that he has been spending every moment of his spare time with you,” Stephanie said. “And making his excuses by saying—what, that I adore weddings? That I demanded to arrange his? He is the one who ought to be addressing invitations, and ordering new boots, and packing his things! And instead he is off caking himself with mud—and doubtless you, as well—like a petulant child.”

“I did not think him petulant,” Jon said. He had the passing sense that he was eavesdropping, somehow, on a private conversation, and dismissed it at once: Stephanie knew precisely to whom she was speaking; and anyway, what could he possibly learn that Lovett did not want him to know?

“Didn’t you!” Stephanie said. She seemed torn between scolding Jon for his part in the matter, and the relief of complaining to a captive audience. “He is a grown man; he is betrothed, and soon to be married. If he _wished_ to spend his days gallivanting through frog ponds and forests with you, well, he had his chance, didn’t he? He didn’t take it!”

“I don’t know,” Jon said. “I think we did about as much gallivanting as we could manage.”

“I brought it up _myself_ ,” Stephanie said, as if she were answering Jon’s assertion, though Jon could not follow that particular conversational thread. “It seemed by far the neatest solution! And he would not hear a word of it. He would not even agree to let our parents speak with yours on the matter—and so then I thought of Mr. Clarke, and I put it to him, and he _agreed_ —”

“Stephanie,” Jon said. Then, thanks only to years of etiquette drills: “Lady Standish.”

Stephanie paused, and blinked at him, and then her mouth rounded into something close to shock.

“I am sorry,” she said after a moment. “I should not have mentioned it.”

“Should not have mentioned _what_?” Jon said. He should know; he should know what she meant, what she was now shaking her head and refusing to say, only he could not quite scrape it together.

“It is nothing,” she said. “It really is: it came to nothing at all. It is—I thought at the time that you might offer for him. But I mentioned it, and he said you would not suit.”

“That I might—” Jon stopped, and did not know how he meant to go on. He felt as if his thoughts were swimming through marsh water; none of them were moving fast enough, and yet if he tried to yank one up to the surface before it was ready, he might lose it entirely.

“Lord Favreau,” Stephanie said worriedly, only then the entrees arrived, and the clattering of plates and exclamations of their fellow guests interrupted their conversation for several moments.

Jon mechanically picked up his fork and his knife, but his thoughts were not on the glazed ham. Would not _suit_? How was it that Lovett had arrived at the conclusion—in what possible sense did he and Lovett not suit each other perfectly? What had two decades of friendship demonstrated, if not that they were entirely suited? Why had Lovett not said—Lovett could not possibly prefer to marry Mr. Clarke than to marry _Jon_ —

—to marry _Jon._ Jon set his fork down and reached for the wine. They could have been married. Why hadn’t he thought of it? Why had such a perfect solution not occurred to him? He could have offered for Lovett, and solved the whole mess before it even began. Why was everyone always insisting that Lovett might find companionship, or even friendship, with Clarke—what did that matter, when there were twenty years of friendship between Jon and Lovett not even in question?  

“Lord Favreau?” Lady Everett said from across the table. It sounded as if it was not the first time she had said his name. Jon looked up and found her smiling at him, politely inquisitive. “I was wondering what you thought of Wellington’s latest dispatches?”

“I—do not know,” Jon said. Lady Everett frowned, a delicate wrinkle between her eyebrows. Jon had no thoughts on Wellington’s dispatches, or on anyone’s dispatches at all, unless they could explain—Christ, Lovett would not need to _move_ if he were marrying Jon. They could stay just where they had always been ( _closer_ , a little voice murmured, for indeed, were they wed, Lovett would have to come live with Jon) and Favreau money could repair the Lovett estate, which was a loan Jon’s father would gladly have offered years ago if he did not know the damage it would do to the Lovett pride. There was no pride to be damaged if the money came from a match—Lovett could stay in Dorset and continue to read his books and write his papers and wander the countryside. He would not need to be parted from his friends, or his family, or from Jon; he would not need to become some faint echo of himself just to soothe London society. He could be entirely himself, and entirely at home, and so could Jon, for they had never been anything less with each other. It was—what had Stephanie said? The neatest solution? It was a _perfect_ solution. And yet—

“Lord Favreau?” Lady Everett said again, frowning.   

—and yet Lovett had refused it.

“I have heard very little of Wellington’s latest,” Stephanie said from Jon’s left. There was a forced cheer in her voice that no one seemed prepared to question. “You must tell me more, Lady Everett.”

“Gladly,” Lady Everett said.

She must have done so. And indeed, the conversation must have moved on to other matters, for even Wellington, revered as he was, could not carry the table along for another forty minutes. Yet Jon found, as the last dishes were cleared away and the ladies retired to the parlor, that he did not recall a word that had been said.

The port was served, and Jon drank it, but without Stephanie there to deflect questions on his behalf he knew his silence was all the more obvious. He couldn’t bring himself to care; or at least not enough to do anything about it. The only person he wished to speak with, suddenly, was Stephanie herself, and of course she had already left the room.

Or, no, she was not the _only_ person he wished to speak with. She might be able to answer some of his questions, but surely the only person who could answer them all was Lovett.

 _Why_ , he imagined asking, _did you not think I would make a suitable husband?_

What could Lovett possibly say? He must have an answer. There must be some reasoning behind it. Jon could not fathom it, but it did bring the last month into sharp relief. Lovett’s impatience with him, his unwillingness to hear from Jon on the topic of courting, or of marriage—well, why should he want such advice from a man he would not even consider as a prospect?

Perhaps the right question was not about Jon’s suitability as a husband. Perhaps the right question was about his behavior as a friend. He must have done _something_ to make Lovett reject even the possibility. Something before this mess with Clarke and courting and Jon’s endless blunders—God, it made so much more sense, now. Of course he had not been able to put a foot right since he returned home: he had been trudging through quicksand all along, and never known it; he had never once been on solid ground.

So what was it that he had _done_? He scrabbled back through years of memories, trying to find his offense. But he could not see it, for he could not recall any disaster, nor any turning point after which Lovett had behaved any differently. And surely Lovett had not harbored some secret grudge, or wound, all this time? Surely Jon would have _known_?

“Well,” Lord Everett said from the head of the table. “Shall we retire, and join the ladies in the parlor?”

Stephanie, Jon thought, as he scraped his chair back and stood. Stephanie would know. Stephanie could explain.

Only when Jon moved towards her where she sat on the settee, she was already shaking her head.

“I should not have said anything,” she said, the moment he was in earshot. Jon sat beside her. “I spoke out of turn and I—I beg your pardon, Lord Favreau.”

“Please,” Jon said, even as she shook her head again. “I cannot understand it—I cannot understand why he would not _consider_ it. What offense have I given? What harm have I done?”

Stephanie reached out, almost as if to put a hand on Jon’s arm. Whether she meant it to be comforting or quelling Jon could not say, for she arrested the movement and took a breath, and put her hands back in her lap.

“I am not aware of any offense,” she said. She spoke slowly, as if the placement of each word was deliberate. “Nor of any harm. Please, Lord Favreau—Jon. Pretend I said nothing.”

It was the use of his name, sans title, that persuaded Jon of her sincerity. She looked so troubled, too, and he was still so at sea, that he could not find it within himself to press her further on the matter. And yet he still had so many questions that they crowded out any polite conversation he might make. In the end, he made none, and the two of them sat together in strained silence, surveying the room as they waited for the evening to end.  

 

 

The carriage ride home was quiet. Even Andy didn’t try to make conversation; he just played with a piece of string, tying and untying knots in it until Jon could have throttled him. _Please,_ Stephanie had said, _pretend I said nothing_ —but it was impossible. Jon felt like he’d looked up into the sky and discovered a second sun blazing overhead. It couldn’t be forgotten, or pretended against: the world was changed.

At home, Jon’s parents said their goodnights and swept upstairs. Jon knew he should do the same, and wait to see how the thing looked from the other side of sleep. Instead, when Andy said, “Nightcap?” in a blithe, offhand tone, Jon followed him into the parlor. He silently accepted the glass of port Andy poured for him before sinking down onto a couch by the fire and frowning at the flames.

“Well?”

“What?” Jon said.

Andy sighed noisily and sat as well. “ _Well_ ,” he said, “what trouble are you in?”

“Trouble?” Jon repeated blankly.

“Gambling debts? I cannot tell you,” Andy said, “how fine a thing it is for a younger brother to find himself, for once, the consoler and not the consoled. Surely not debts, though? Father would pay them in an instant.”

“Of course not debts,” Jon said. He drained his glass in one gulp and rose to refill it.

“Something else, then,” Andy said. “Have you agreed to a duel? That would certainly weigh heavy on the mind. Do you have need of a second? It would have to be me—for Lovett, as well you know, cannot be trusted with a pistol.”

“You’re being ridiculous,” Jon said roughly.

Andy was undeterred. “Is it a love affair? For God’s sake, Jon, give me _something_ —in Kent, perhaps? I can see it, truly—I’ve put my finger on it—you attended some ball, and the crowds parted before you, and you laid eyes on the loveliest heiress in all of—”

“ _Andrew_ ,” Jon ground out. He drained the measure of port he’d already decanted, then poured another and returned to the settee. “Why has everyone spent so much time imagining how I might make a—a quite fanciful match? Ridiculous.”

“Everyone?”

“Leave it be,” Jon said, trying to firm his voice. “Nothing is wrong. I’ve been corresponding with no heiresses to speak of.”

“Very well,” Andy said dubiously, and took a sip of his own drink, the very picture of careless leisure.

It was late.

Jon kept reminding himself of the time—past ten, by now—too late to do anything, save write a letter, which couldn’t begin to—which simply wasn’t—

It was no good for Jon to ask himself any more questions, or dig deeper and deeper into his own memories, trying to find where everything had gone wrong. He didn’t _know_. The only thing for it was certainly to speak with Lovett—and this time, Jon vowed, noise rushing in his ears, he wouldn’t be put off by the butler for days or weeks on end, until Lovett was married and making for London. _This_ time… he’d see Lovett tomorrow if it was the last thing he did. He’d ride over at dawn; sit on the doorstep until the servants rose and _had_ to let him in; he’d be waiting in the parlor when Lovett came down to breakfast, ready to ask him—

“— _Jon_ ,” Andy said.

“Stephanie told me,” Jon said abruptly, and stopped.

“Please, dear God, continue,” Andy said. “You can’t begin what’s like to be the first halfway interesting sentence you’ve spoken all night and just—”

“She said…” Jon interrupted, then found himself at a loss again.

Andy took a speaking sip of port.

“Did you ever think,” Jon said finally, “when the Lovetts were searching for a suitable match…”

“Mmm?”

“Did it ever occur to you…”

“A great number of things occurred to me,” Andy said, when Jon stalled yet again. “Chief among them that they should be lucky to find a man of means whom Lovett would not contrive to drive immediately from the house in tears. They are fortunate indeed that—”

“Did you ever think _I_ should offer for him?” Jon blurted out. “ _Could_ offer for him,” he corrected himself, and shifted back on the settee so that his face was further from the fire.

“You?” Andy said.

“Me,” Jon said.  

“…Good Lord,” Andy said after a long moment, and laughed abruptly. “Offer for _Lovett_?”

“Is it so unthinkable?”

“Did _you_ ever think it?” Andy countered, and laughed again. He had been looking, for the past half hour, slightly apprehensive, as if at any second Jon really might reveal some dark secret; now, as he laughed, that apprehension fell away. He seemed genuinely cheered—as if Jon had told a joke. “Lord,” he said again. “You offer for Lovett—”

“Why not?” Jon said. The more Andy chuckled, the more frantic he felt. “We have always been the best of friends; our families are close, our lands adjoining. Our circumstances… All the reasons Lovett has given for his match with Mr. Clarke—it would not be so dissimilar—a match between us, instead.”

“Oh, do not mistake me!” Andy said, throwing his hands up as if to beg a ceasefire. “By all means, you have my blessing! Go and offer for him! You’ve given it enough thought, I see, and besides, it’s not as if you need any peace and quiet at home—Christ knows you wouldn't get any if you married Lovett.”

 _He said you would not suit_ , Jon remembered, and nearly flinched. “I’m not saying—I’m not marrying him. He is engaged now, it isn’t—we could not—I’m merely asking if, in the past…” _Would not suit. Would not suit._

“I was joking, Jon,” Andy said. “It isn’t like you to take everything so seriously, and you must admit, it’s funny—the whole idea! Can you imagine: you and Lovett, lords of the manor, making nothing but mischief in your own home! Teasing your own servants! Forty years from now, still pilfering hand-pies as they cool in your own kitchen! I cannot imagine a more chaotic estate.”

Jon would not admit the image to be funny. He was startling himself with how vehemently he would not admit it. “I am merely asking,” he repeated, “if it ever occurred to you: that is all!”

“ _Lovett_ ,” Andy repeated again with a gurgle. “Marry _Lovett_. He is the most needful man I’ve ever met—although you’ve always indulged it, so perhaps you wouldn’t care! He’d wake you three times a night at _least_ to complain about a draft—or the heat—or a dream he had—good God! I’d shoot him,” Andy said cheerfully, and drained his drink, in apparent high spirits.

“He’s my best friend,” Jon said.

“Of course he is,” Andy said. “That doesn’t mean you’d want him for a husband.”

 _But I do_ , Jon thought—and was on his feet before he knew what he was doing.

“Are you getting another?” Andy said. He held his glass out. “Just bring the decanter over. Should we have a cigar?”

“No,” Jon said, in what he knew must be a wild tone—for Andy turned in alarm to observe him as he strode towards the door. “I’m sorry—”

“Jon?”

“—there’s something I have to do,” Jon said, and fled.

 

 

It was past eleven o'clock, and raining, and Jon was dimly aware that the sensible thing to do would be to take the carriage. But then he would have to rouse the driver, and wait for the carriage to be brought round. As it was, he saddled his horse in minutes and was off well before any vehicle might have been ready.

The night air was bracing and the rain not too heavy. Jon felt almost as if the dark around him and the wind behind him were urging him on. In the light of day, it might seem absurd to go to Lovett and demand an explanation; now, it only seemed necessary. He had to ask, that was all. Surely Lovett would understand that Jon had to ask—had to understand. He would explain that it had come to him this evening—that he was only wondering why—what a strange thing, that it had never occurred to either of them—

Only it _had_ occurred to Lovett, Jon thought. It had occurred to Lovett, and Lovett had rejected the idea without even mentioning it to Jon. _He said you would not suit_.

What did Lovett imagine marriage to Jon would be _like_? Andy had painted a farce, but Jon, when he put his mind to it, could see a much fuller picture—they would make mischief, doubtless, for they always had, and Jon could not imagine giving it up simply because of a few vows. But there would be much more to it: a shared library, filled with whichever books Lovett chose, and all of Jon’s old favorites, too. Meals taken together in the dining room—or, no, too formal. The dining room for guests, but when it was only the two of them, they would eat in the parlor, near the fire, and laugh as they exchanged the news of the day. There would be no end of flamboyantly patterned wallpaper and leatherbound encyclopedias and odd antiquities that Lovett would wish to buy, and why shouldn’t he buy them all? Jon had more money then he would ever know what to do with, and given the chance, he would gladly spend it on Lovett’s happiness.

Was that Lovett’s objection? Did he think, somehow, that Jon wouldn’t have been a kind husband? Caring? That he wouldn’t have welcomed Lovett as a partner, an equal, and delighted in his company, indulged even his smallest whims? Jon would have, of _course_ he would have; Lovett knew Jon better than anyone, save perhaps his family, and certainly Lovett should have known _that_.   

The Lovett manor loomed before him, all strange angles in the dark. But there was still a stablehand there to take Jon's horse—it must not have been long since the bulk of the family arrived home from the Everetts' party—and Jon could see flickering firelight through one of the upstairs windows. He climbed the steps two at a time and knocked on the front door, bypassing the knocker in favor of stinging raps with his knuckles.

"My lord," the butler said, looking startled. "It is very late."

"I need to see Lovett," Jon said, and became aware, as he said it, that there was a rasp in his voice from his hurry, and the chill.

"He is in the parlor," Hughes began. Jon strode toward the stairs.

"Is he expecting you?" Hughes called after him; but Jon did not have an answer that would satisfy propriety, and so he gave no answer at all. The hallway was dim, the candles long since snuffed for the evening, but Jon knew his way as surely as he did in his own home, and gained the parlor with no trouble. The door was a little ajar. Jon could hear a fire crackling within. He did not knock. He did not need to—he only needed to reach Lovett, and get his explanation, and then—

"What," Lovett said, and then, "oh."

Jon blinked. Lovett was sitting in an armchair by the rain-dashed window, peering over his shoulder to see who had come in. As Jon watched, he stood, a little clumsy, and turned. He was holding a glass in one hand; it sloshed dangerously as he braced himself on the chair back.

"Lord Favreau," Lovett said. Jon wanted to flinch. He took a step closer, instead.

“Jon,” Jon corrected. He was startled to find himself quite breathless, and to find, as well, that his head was suddenly, hummingly empty. It was hard to make words. “I’m—pleased to find you still awake, Lovett, for—”

“Awake,” Lovett said, “but not at home.”

“Not—what?”

“At home,” Lovett repeated. He was speaking in a strange, careful tone, and holding himself very still, as if the slightest movement might tip him over completely. “To visitors,” he added. “Come back tomorrow. I cannot possibly be held—I cannot speak with you. Just at the moment.” He raised his glass, almost as if to toast, and downed the rest of its contents.

“Are you—” Jon began, and then thought better of it. Lovett never got drunk the way Jon sometimes did: it was always Lovett wedged under Jon’s shoulder, holding him up, when he drank too much at some performance or party, and had to stagger back to the carriage. Right now, though, as Lovett moved away from the window and closer to the fire, Jon realized that his face was flushed, and his movements jerky and unfamiliar, even to Jon, who knew Lovett’s stride as well as he knew his own. When he forced his gaze away, he could see a much-depleted decanter of something—wine perhaps—on the end table nearest the window.

“Come back tomorrow, I said,” Lovett said again. He was over-enunciating.

“I don’t think I will,” Jon said slowly. He’d thought this through, hadn’t he, the whole ride over? Known what he meant to say? And yet now, confronted with Lovett, he could only think: _He said you would not suit_. “I think—I think I would like to speak with you tonight. Please.”

Lovett went very still, just for a moment, and then leveled his gaze at Jon, his eyebrows raised. “You think; you think! Think less,” he said, and coughed a kind of half-laugh. “You think far too much, Lord Favreau—”

“ _Jon_ ,” Jon insisted. He was startled to hear his own voice sound almost plaintive. He wanted to build the fire back up, and stow the wine away; he wanted to close the curtains, and then open them again to reveal frank, plain daylight. Everything felt so unfamiliar, suddenly, and Lovett would not use his _name_.

“—about things that aren’t your business.”

“ _You_ are my business,” Jon said. “Lovett—!” But Lovett only laughed again, and crossed the room toward the sideboard. He picked up a decanter of wine and swished its contents round with a sigh before pushing it decisively away and pouring a measure of golden whiskey, instead.

Jon managed finally to uproot himself and move forward, pausing at the settee, perhaps five paces from Lovett still. “You’ve had enough,” he said. An understatement: he was _soused_ , Jon thought—how long had he been here drinking? All night? It was so uncharacteristic, Jon almost couldn’t get his mind around the image. It made his chest tighten up.

“Hardly,” Lovett said. He took a sip and winced.

“You are not yourself,” Jon began, though it was not what he had come here to talk about. Or perhaps it was—perhaps Lovett had been keeping secrets for so long that Jon did not know him half so well as he thought.

“Go,” Lovett said, almost dispassionate. He was not looking at Jon; he was examining the whisky in his glass.

“No,” Jon said. “You are not—”

“A man can’t drink alone in his parlor now?” Lovett demanded. There was a lick of anger in his voice, and yet it seemed to vanish again as he went on. “Or, well. Drink alone in his father’s parlor, I suppose. Soon I’ll have my own you know. In _London_.” He pronounced ‘London’ with an exaggerated curl of his tongue, as if it were some foreign word that he had only ever seen written down.

“I know,” Jon said. He wanted to be angry, too—with Lovett’s secrecy, and his evasions, and his strange, aloof turns. And yet he could not help what he felt, nor could he stop himself from voicing it. “I wish you weren’t going.”

Lovett scoffed. Jon felt a sharp ache at the back of his throat.

“You’ve made that very clear,” Lovett said. “ _Very_ clear. _Abundantly_ clear. You know, some people might say it was bad etiquette to make such a fuss over a disturbance in—in one small corner of your lovely, golden life. Most people— _most_ people would say it was bad etiquette. _I_ would say it was bad etiquette.”

Christ—!

“Damn etiquette!” Jon said explosively. His voice was loud over the spitting of the rain and the hissing of the fire. “What in God’s name does etiquette have to do with it? And when did you become so preoccupied with its trappings? I’ll _miss_ you. Is that a crime to say? I miss you already! Ever since I came back—ever since you started—since—”

“Courting,” Lovett said, too slow and careful. Almost mean. “It’s the most commonplace thing in the world.”

“…Yes. Since you started—since your engagement—Lovett, I cannot understand what on Earth you’re thinking. I can’t understand it, and you won’t _talk_ to me.”

It wasn’t as if the world would stop spinning if Jon didn’t get answers tonight. The sun would rise tomorrow, and the next day, and there would be time—time when Lovett was not drunk, when his face was not more than half in shadow. Time to converse, and to ask for answers. And yet Jon felt as if he were clinging to this moment by his fingernails.

“Won’t _talk_ to you?” Lovett said. He took another sip of the whiskey, and his mouth twisted to one side. “Be thankful,” he said, pronouncing each word deliberately, “that I don’t talk more. The things I don’t say, I don’t say them for your sake.”

“Thankful?” Jon demanded. His voice was too loud again. The room was too hot. “ _All_ I want,” he said, trying to lower his voice, trying to breathe in the strange, still air, “is for you to tell me the truth.”

“You don’t,” Lovett said. He sounded just on the edge of laughter. “You _don’t_ want that.” Jon opened his mouth to object, but Lovett pressed on. “If I told you the truth—” He stopped, and took a deep, shivering breath; Jon could see the movement of his chest. “You cannot be the right man for me to marry, because I couldn’t possibly be happily married to you,” he recited, in the tone of someone rattling off his times tables.

Lovett’s words hit Jon like an anvil. They knocked the breath out of him. For a moment, he was so confused that he almost thought—had _he_ raised the topic? Surely not. He was too disconcerted to think clearly, but when he clawed back through the conversation that had led them here—no. He had said nothing; he had not yet determined where to begin. And yet here was Lovett beginning for him! And saying—

_You cannot be the right man for me to marry._

It stung. _I certainly can,_ he wanted to say, but he could not quite recover himself to speak. The exact subject he’d come to confront Lovett about, and he was too confused and caught off-guard to say anything; to make his case or ask any of the questions racketing around inside his head. More peculiarly still, Lovett, who was staring into his glass and not even looking at Jon, seemed to expect no response.

Jon felt more and more as if he had intruded on a conversation Lovett was having with himself. Lovett had phrased his claim as if speaking from some mutually agreed upon premise, as if raising some theoretical point he’d hashed out with himself a hundred times before. Jon was reminded of the mathematical proofs Lovett used to try and explain when they were both home from university, and stuck inside on rainy days. He had rarely understood those either, and often found himself scrambling to catch up with Lovett, whose mind moved differently than Jon’s—who made leaps and side-steps that Jon would neither have considered nor attempted.

“How sensibly I’m sure you could argue for it,” Lovett continued. He drained half of the remaining whiskey in one bitter gulp. “Oh, it’s charming to imagine now, a lifetime of—of—” Lovett gestured, his hand cutting a swathe through the air between them. “But you wouldn’t be happy. And I wouldn’t be happy.” He smiled, or maybe grimaced. “You cannot imagine the things I want from you.”

“What—things?” Jon said.

Lovett blinked, as if he’d forgotten Jon were even there. “What?” he said. And then, plaintive: “Can’t you go? You should have gone.”

Jon could _not_ go; he could not move. His mind was churning desperately, trying to think of anything Lovett might want from him that he wouldn’t willingly give.

“And anyway, why worry any more about it?” Lovett asked, speaking quickly now, as if to distract—from what? “I solved it. You don’t appreciate me at all. I saved you from all your honorable intentions. It’s done.” He looked, in the space between breaths, very small. “I can be happy without you,” he said, not even looking at Jon anymore, and winced.

“You can be— _I_ can’t be,” Jon said, and then, “You solved _what_?”

 _Explain this to me_ , he wanted to say. He thought again of those pages full of scrawled mathematics that Lovett seemed to thrive on and that Jon never quite understood. _I know I’m being dense, but you have to help me catch up_.

“Were you not going to offer for me?” Lovett said. He looked up, suddenly, and met Jon’s eyes. His voice was entirely calm, level. There were two points of color high in his cheeks.

“Offer—?” Jon said. The word tripped out of his mouth with nothing to follow it. The back of his neck was hot; he felt as if his blood was much too close to the surface of his skin, and yet he could not force himself to understand _why_.

“Or—God—it never even occurred to you,” Lovett said. He barked a sharp laugh that was hardly a laugh at all, and drained the remainder of his glass.

“Lovett—”

“ _That_ is a good joke,” Lovett said. “How stupid of me to think—”

“Stop,” Jon said, and did not know if he was asking or telling. “For God’s sake, stop! Whatever you believe my lack of imagination has illuminated—I swear, it signifies nothing. You have always been quicker than I to see a clever solution, and if you—did you—have you purposely averted me from it, all these years?

“Averted you—?”

“Any time I mentioned marriage,” Jon said desperately. It hadn’t previously occurred to him, but as he spoke, a million insignificant pleasantries, offhanded comments, deft conversational redirects swam up through the murk of his memory and began to coalesce in certainty. He _ought_ to have thought of it—this easy solution. If it had occurred to Lovett and never once to Jon—surely there was a _reason_ for that.  “Any time the conversation might naturally have led us to the _question_ of marriage—”

“Absurd,” Lovett snapped. He reached out as if to pour more whiskey. His hand, Jon noticed distantly, was shaking too badly, and he dropped it back to his side.

“—you put me off! Always something to say about—you and Andy _both_ —talking as if I’m waiting for some perfect woman to sweep into my life, ‘Lady Favreau’ stamped across her forehead—”

“A woman of fashion,” Lovett muttered, barely audible, then said, louder, a strained note in his voice, “The late hour has made you paranoid—leave it, Jon—just leave—”  

“Stephanie told me,” Jon said abruptly. _He_ was shaking; he could feel himself shaking. “She told me that you said—that we would not suit.”

“…Ah,” Lovett said, after a long moment.

“If I had thought to offer for you—but you didn’t _want_ me to. All your talk of companionship—the cornerstone of marriage, you tell me—and yet you could not—cannot—see _me_ as…”

“Grown and married and _still_ a tattle-tale,” Lovett said, almost to himself, smiling humorlessly. He attempted the whiskey again, and this time managed to slosh another measure into his glass.

“It isn’t funny,” Jon said.

“On the contrary,” Lovett said. “I’m quite diverted.”

“For God’s sake, Lovett,” Jon said desperately. “You’re my closest friend. How could you never, even for a moment, have thought I might make you a serviceable husband?”

Lovett blinked at him. His cheeks were red, from the fire and the drink, and his lips were wet with whiskey. As Jon watched, they parted a little, and something like shock rippled across Lovett’s face before he began to laugh so wildly that Jon, after a moment of incomprehension, wanted to fall through the floor.  

“Never—?” Lovett said, half-choked. “You are the only man I have ever thought _could_.”

Jon’s breath caught in his throat and he could not get it back. It was silent in the parlor. In the fireplace a log shifted, and sparked.

Lovett, though, was already swallowing and speaking again, sharp, bitter laughter running along just beneath his words: “Can you imagine,” he said. He set his glass down on the mantel and leaned against it, unsteady on his feet. He was looking near Jon, but not quite at him. Jon wanted to step close, and closer still, until he came squarely into Lovett’s eyeline, filled it—and yet _still_ he could not move. “How it felt for Stephanie to suggest—that you and _I_ … that you might be destined to do anything other than make the most thrilling marriage the ton has ever seen? Can you imagine—if my parents had asked you—if I asked you—” Lovett seemed to have gone somewhere far away. “You would have said yes,” he concluded heavily.

“I would have said—of _course_ I would have said yes,” Jon repeated in bewilderment.

Lovett’s chin jerked up, eyes refocusing, as if he’d forgotten again that Jon was there.

“Of course,” Jon said again, and then the words were crowding past each other to get out into the open air. “I have been trying for the better part of half an hour now to say as much. I cannot see what your objection is. I have been turning it over in my mind all night—ever since Steph—don’t blame her, Lovett, for I haven’t understood you at all this past month, and now—what did I do? It would have been—the neatest possible solution. I would have said yes in an instant.”

“I know,” Lovett said. His voice was thready. “That you do not apprehend how well I know…! Yes. You would have said yes. I would have been—unable to refuse you. We might even now be married. And I would have wanted you every day of my life; and you would have regretted it every day of yours.”

 _Regretted_ —Jon grasped for words that would not come. His heart kicked against his ribs.

“Would have wanted me?” he echoed.

“It doesn’t signify,” Lovett said. He looked flat all of a sudden. “I’m tired, Jon. Leave it. Will you leave it already?”

How would it have gone, Jon thought, if he _had_ offered for Lovett? If Lovett had—had wanted it? Which he _hadn’t_ —but now—now he was saying—

If he _had_ —

Jon tried to imagine it: the way Lovett would have flushed with pleasure; the way he might’ve ducked his head to hide a smile. The way Jon would’ve coaxed him to look up, leaning in to kiss his cheek, or—or.

 _I would have wanted you every day of my life_. He grasped for it: every day of their lives. A hundred days, a thousand, to draw Lovett close to him, a hand on his cheek, and—

“But you never _asked_ ,” he said. Had he moved closer, or had Lovett? No, Lovett was still moored to the mantel. It must have been Jon. “How could you know I would have regretted it, if you never asked?”

Lovett said nothing. He glanced at Jon and then away, much too quick.

“Lovett,” Jon said more sharply. He could feel something like panic rising in his chest. “You never—”

“I _knew_ ,” Lovett snapped.

“ _I_ didn’t! How could you know, if I didn’t?” Jon had never even considered—never even _knew_ to consider—and Lovett had somehow alighted on certainty.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Lovett said. His eyes wouldn’t stay still.

“I’m _not_ being ridiculous,” Jon said. _Look at me_ , he wanted to shout. He wanted to get Lovett by the shoulders—to hell with manners and etiquette and social mores—with all the nonsense to which Lovett had spent the month enjoying an unprecedented commitment—and shake him until he produced, in plain-spoken English, the answers Jon desperately needed. For a moment in the midst of chaos he felt a familiar, exasperated ache: Lovett was so infuriating, so impossible, so beloved. “Stop telling me what I want! I know you are always five steps ahead, but for once can you allow me to—” He broke off. “ _Want_ me?” He didn’t know which allowances to beg for. He didn’t _know_. He could hear the word over and over again in his head: want. Want. _Want._

Lovett made no reply.

“You said—”

“It’s cruel to repeat it and repeat it when the meaning is clear as day,” Lovett bit out. He’d finally gone glassy-eyed—from the drink, Jon thought desperately, _surely_. “Are you determined to be unkind? Will you not be content until you hear me say it? Very well: to want, to desire. To passionately—to want passionately,” he said, almost defiantly, and shuddered, and closed his eyes. “To desire—carnally—”

There was a faint ringing in Jon’s ears. A huge clap of thunder. He couldn’t seem to make himself move.

“Am I clarifying?” Lovett said. “Is it coming clear? Do you remember how often we hid on one balcony or another from some young lady seeking your attentions? Laugh: I am that young lady. When I look at you, my heart quickens; I want—I _want_ —more? Should I say more? Surely it’s enough now; surely I’ve shocked you enough. No? More? To want: to feel for someone an attraction they cannot feel in return—”

Lovett opened his eyes and stopped talking, quite abruptly.  

The ringing in Jon’s ears had gotten louder. His whole body was buzzing. He was sure he looked slapped stupid; _however_ he looked, it was enough to keep Lovett from resuming his speech. Instead, he stayed shockingly still, eyes wide, with a look on his face Jon had never seen before—like he had no idea how to continue. His hair was flat on one side, as if he’d been leaning on one hand all afternoon, and wild on the other, over-curled in the damp air; and his face was half-shadowed, half flame-licked, from the discordantly cheerful fire. He was—it was Lovett, it was only Lovett, but—

Jon was remembering, suddenly, all those times they _had_ hidden together, spent the night secreted away, drinking and talking and poking fun at their fellow guests, all with Lovett griping happily about the cold. Jon could have taken Lovett’s hands in his, then. He could have wrapped an arm around Lovett’s shoulders, even, with no one to see, and it would have warmed them both. There must have been a hundred, a _thousand_ times when they were out walking together, trudging through the orchard or back from the stream, when Jon might have tucked Lovett’s hand into the crook of his arm as they walked, or reached out to brush his hair back from his face, and it felt almost shocking, now, that he never had.

 _Only_ Lovett? Only Lovett in that Lovett was the only person Jon could never imagine tiring of.

 _I would have wanted you every day of my life_ , Jon heard again.

“You,” Jon said. His mouth felt dry. “Oh.”

It was impossible to stop looking at Lovett. And for once, Lovett did not seem inclined to stop looking back. Jon met his eyes; then, unable to stop himself, he glanced down again at the soft bow of his mouth.

Lovett made an aborted sound. As Jon stared, he swallowed visibly, his pale throat working.

It had been hours since Jon had arrived home from the Everetts’ supper; even the port he’d downed in the sitting room after must have worn off by now. And yet his legs felt leaden, as if he were drunk, and his stomach was turning, and he was still looking at Lovett, eyes following his throat until it disappeared into an untidy cravat, and then sweeping across the span of his shoulders, down his chest, catching on his waist, his thighs, drinking him in. It wasn’t new—none of it was new—but this _feeling_ was new—like he might catch fire if he let his eyes rest for more than a moment on the bare skin of Lovett’s forearms, the sweep of his eyelashes, or if he thought any longer about how compact Lovett was, and about how he’d felt, just the once, when Jon held him in his arms—the exact right size, small and safe.

“Jon,” Lovett said, so faintly it almost disappeared into the sound of heavy rain on the roof.

"You're always so sure you know everything," Jon said roughly. He dragged his eyes up and caught again on Lovett’s—Jesus—on his mouth, soft and red, Lovett breathing heavily—his mouth, half-parted—”But if you could just—every now and then—give a man a chance—" He took an unsteady step forward—

“I'm betrothed," Lovett said abruptly.

—and caught himself before he could take another, swaying towards Lovett, staggered.

“I’m still betrothed,” Lovett said, faintly, again, and closed his eyes. His hands were clenched up at his sides in tight fists.

For a long moment, Jon stood there not saying things. He did not, for instance, demand that Lovett open his eyes; nor did he curse obscenely, or try to explain the feelings that had overcome him—surely Lovett could see them writ clear across his face—or tell Lovett that his fiancé could hang for all Jon cared, which he wouldn’t have meant. He wouldn’t. How could he fault Mr. Clarke—or any man—for meeting Lovett and discovering in a moment what Jon had not managed in a lifetime. No—he could not lay blame there. But: “You should have _asked_.”

“Stop,” Lovett said in a wooden tone. He reached up to grip the mantel again, white-knuckled.

“You should have—”

“Jon—”

“ _—asked—_ how was I supposed to know, Lovett? You never—you _never_ —said _anything_ to make me think that you cared for me—that you could care for me like—I didn’t _know_.” Lovett was shaking his head, a stubborn, repetitive gesture that Jon had witnessed a thousand times: refusal to concede a point. Usually, it made Jon laugh and work harder to move him. Now, Jon wanted to wring his damn neck. He wanted to thumb his lower lip and watch him shudder, tip his chin up. He wanted—he _wanted_. For Lovett to have thought himself incurably alone in this—when, if he had spoken even _once_ —Jon wanted to cry. “I didn’t know,” he said. A full month, now, of the harshest reprobations Lovett had ever levied at him in all their years of friendship: _Cruel. Unkind._ Maybe he was, because he was hurting Lovett—he could tell—and couldn’t bring himself to stop. “How could I have known how much I would hate to see you with anybody else, anybody but me—it should have been me—you should have let it be me. I would have kissed you—”

“Jon, for God’s sake,” Lovett said. His cheek was wet.  

Jon was dimly surprised to realize that he wanted—it was the kind of impulse he’d never had in his life—to haul off and punch something; or to go outside, somewhere far away from the manor, and scream until he was hoarse, until his voice was nearly gone. “How long?” he asked Lovett instead.

“Always,” Lovett said, and before Jon could open his mouth to speak, was tripping over himself to say, “You can’t ride home in this weather. We’ll have to rouse someone about the carriage—”

“Damn the weather,” Jon snapped.

“Jon—”

“And damn you,” Jon said, “for—for knowing everything, and doing nothing!”

“You can’t stay,” Lovett said.   

“Drag me out the front door yourself, then,” Jon told him, and went hot all over at the thought of it—Lovett’s hands on him, holding him fast.

“You _can’t_. Don’t look at me like that,” Lovett said, more insistently. His eyes were big and dark; he was trying, Jon could tell, to sound scathing. It wasn’t working.

“Always?”

“Damn _you,”_ Lovett choked out, helpless and waspish at once; and Jon staggered two involuntary steps forward—impossible not to—and pulled him into a crushing kiss.

If he’d been thinking—

He wasn’t, and he couldn’t. If he _had_ been, he might have touched Lovett’s face first, gently, wonderingly; might have kissed his cheek, and the corner of his eye, before even daring to glance down at his mouth. Instead, he realized after a heady moment, he’d done the thing artlessly: he was gripping Lovett’s arm brutally tight, threading his other hand through the soft, fine hairs at the nape of Lovett’s neck, and Lovett was gasping or—groaning—a shocked little noise—lips parting in startlement so that Jon could kiss him deeper, open-mouthed. He gave way as easily as someone who—who’d thought about it before, a thousand times. It was a debilitating thought. Jon felt like a madman. He was certainly behaving like one. He was being wild, he _was_ , but who cared—God—because Lovett was being wild _back_ , surging closer, slinging an arm around Jon’s neck trying to say something that Jon couldn’t make out because he wouldn’t stop kissing—couldn’t—  

Lovett had been standing by the fire for long enough that he was warm all over. He _was_ exactly the right size to hold close, Jon thought dizzily: small and broad at once, and squirming in Jon’s arms, trying to get closer, even though there was no closer to get—Jon was holding him too tightly. His mouth tasted like alcohol. He kept making noises as Jon kissed him, desperate noises that zipped down Jon’s spine and pooled low in his stomach, where he could feel himself stirring already. He was behaving—badly. He knew that. He was dimly aware of that much. And yet—to _stop_ —

“Jon,” Lovett managed to gasp when Jon briefly pulled back for air. He was breathing hard.

“I’m sorry,” Jon murmured, and kissed him again, slower. He’d managed to back Lovett up against the wall of the parlor. He let up on his arm, finally, Lovett shivering at the release, and cupped his face.

“Jon, we _can’t_ ,” Lovett said; but his arms were still twined around Jon’s neck, and when Jon nuzzled forward—barely a kiss, just a closeness—Lovett shuddered again, and his fingers twitched and clenched up.

“Darling,” Jon said hoarsely. It was the strangest thing: he’d never said it before—never once—but he couldn’t have stopped himself from speaking the word if he tried.

Its effect on Lovett was pronounced. He jerked in Jon’s grasp, turned his face until it was practically hidden in Jon’s hand. His breath was hot on Jon’s palm, and coming fast.

“Darling,” Jon said again, testing.

“That’s not—”

“Look at me—”

“ _—fair_ ,” Lovett said, but kissed Jon’s hand anyway, as if he couldn’t help himself.

How many times? How many times had they been alone together? Jon couldn’t have counted with every finger on the Continent. On balconies, in bedrooms; in sitting rooms and parlors and kitchens and carriages; in stables and haylofts, in endless meadows and stretching woods. Jon had, he realized, a million times been in a position to touch Lovett just like this—to clutch him close, press fevered kisses to his upturned lips, to watch him flush and pant and scramble closer, begging for more. If he had only _known_ —!

“I’m sorry,” he said, and kissed along Lovett’s jaw—frantic, sucking kisses—as Lovett jerked in his grip again, clutching convulsively at his shoulders.

“Don’t—”

“Is it good?” He was so breathless he almost couldn’t speak. He was stroking Lovett’s cheek with his thumb, until Lovett gave in and opened his eyes again, turned them back on Jon. “Am I—Lovett—”  

“Idiot,” Lovett said thickly, and tipped his chin up—a fever dream—and kissed Jon like that, his pretty mouth slick and hot beneath Jon’s, tongue swiping hesitantly at Jon’s lip, like he didn’t know what he was doing—like he didn’t know what he wanted—

If Jon had known—

His blood was pounding in his ears.

If he’d known, he would have debauched Lovett a thousand times over by now, laws and God propriety all be damned. Jon was damning it even now, as he pressed Lovett against the wall, as his hand slid down to clutch at Lovett’s hip, slid around again to hitch Lovett closer. His leg, somehow, was between Lovett’s thighs, and Lovett was also—Jon’s heart was beating so quickly he thought he might drop dead—he was also—Jon could feel that he—

There was a noise in the hall, near the parlor door.

Time seemed to stop.

“Oh God,” Lovett said in a low, despairing voice; but Jon was already, wrench though it was, leaping back, turning on his heel to stride across the room, stopping only when the door actually began to open. He’d managed to clear the settee, and grabbed its back with one hand to steady himself, cutting his gaze across the room, trying not to breathe heavily, to see how Lovett had fared.

Lovett had not moved an inch in any direction. He had managed, just about, to straighten up, but was half-leaning on the wall exactly where Jon had left him. As Jon watched, he made as if to push himself fully upright and gave the effort up, sagging back and contriving fumblingly to affect an artful lounge. His face was so red it made Jon ache to look at, and his legs were trembling.

“Your Lordship,” Hughes began—for it was the butler, of course, who’d intruded. He made no sign that he regarded the scene before him as untoward, or even unusual. His countenance was unreadably placid. “Can I—”

“The storm,” Lovett blurted out. Hughes paused deferentially as he spoke, and pretended not to notice when Lovett fumbled twice attempting to produce a full sentence. “The storm is—far too severe for Lord Favreau to—”

“No,” Jon interrupted. He tightened his grip on the chair back. “It’s fine—”

“It’s awful out,” Lovett said. He wasn’t looking at Jon. Jon could understand that. He _could_. “If you ride in this—”

“It’s fine,” Jon said desperately. “Hughes—have the groom fetch my horse. My apologies. The hour escaped me.”

He wasn’t sure to whom he was apologizing, or even for what. If he blinked once more, he thought, he was going to cry, so he contrived not to. Woodenly, he inclined his head towards Lovett, trying not to observe too closely his state of dishevelment; and trying, at the same time, to commit it all to memory—the flushed line of his jaw, his half-untucked shirt, his hand, clenched up near the wall.  

“Don’t be foolish,” Lovett said, almost too low to hear. He shook his head. “Jon—”

“It’s nothing,” Jon said. He tried to smile. It felt frightful. Everything hurt. “A bit of rain. Please. The cold will be—most bracing.”

Lovett opened his mouth as if to speak. Hughes was still hovering in the doorway, awaiting a more certain pronouncement. When Lovett said nothing for a long moment, eyes fixed on the dim of the room behind Jon, Jon inclined his head again. “Indeed,” he said, “I’ve kept you long enough. I’ll—goodnight. I’ll bid you goodnight. I’ll wait out front—” and so took his leave, calling upon his last vestigial reserves of self control and not looking back as he left the room—not looking back even once.

 

 

Jon remembered the ride home as a collection of sensations more than anything else. He was much too warm, and the air too cold. Rain trickled unpleasantly under his collar. He could not see more than three feet in front of his face. He had the sense, at least, to take the road; he thought, looking back on it, that his horse must have done the wayfinding. Jon could not have managed it.

He arrived home to a dark house, and no one to stable the horse. He did it himself, and wrestled out of his wet clothes, as well—he did not wish to wake his valet. He did not know what he would have said. How could he explain where he had been, or the state he was in? He could hardly explain it to himself. He could hardly think about it, except that he could hardly _stop_ thinking about it either. Lovett was—Lovett had _always_ —only Lovett was betrothed. Betrothed, and half an hour ago, Jon had pressed him up against the wall. If he were here now, sopping wet and shivering with cold, they might peel each other out of their soaked and clinging clothes, laughing and murmuring in hushed tones in the close dark—only Lovett was _betrothed_. There was no path that did not lead there, sooner or later, and Jon chased it all around in circles even as he could barely look the idea in the eye.

He did not sleep well that night.

 

 

He woke the next morning—so he must have achieved _some_ sleep—to gray, and chill, and mist. It almost felt, looking out the window at what seemed to be a featureless landscape, that the Favreau estate was enclosed in its own world, without another living soul for miles around. He could not see the road, or any carriages passing by; he could not glimpse the wood, or beyond it, the Lovett manor. In a world outside of this one, Lovett was engaged to be married. In a world outside of this one, the wedding preparations marched on, unmoved by the way that Jon—the way that he felt. The things he had realized. The things that he wanted.

Only that would be true no matter the weather, or the view from his window.

Jon winced, and went to go and splash water on his face. He would have to be something like wakeful before his valet arrived to dress him.

He did manage to approximate wakefulness, at least enough that no one commented on it at breakfast. Andy did slant him a querying look, and Jon only shook his head. He could not explain—if it was only his own social ruin to confess, he might have done it. But to implicate himself was to implicate Lovett into the bargain, and for what? Lovett was betrothed. He was _betrothed_.

There were scones and jam and tea for breakfast. Jon’s mother held lively court about the start of the London season—for the last several years, the Favreaus had attended Miss Ryan’s ball, and a few other of the more notable events on the social calendar. There were travel preparations to be made, and appointments to keep with tailors and the like. Jon occupied himself with assuring an even layer of jam was spread across the whole of his scone.

“Are you going to eat that?” Andy was saying, just as Morton entered the room.

“Pardon me,” he said, “but young Lord Lovett is in the parlor. I realize it is very early for visiting—“

“Oh, he is not a _visitor_ ,” Lady Favreau said happily. “Show him in!”

“My lady,” the butler said, and nodded. Jon stared at his plate. There was a little ridge of jam just at the edge of the scone. Perhaps with a little knifework he could level it.

“Lord Lovett!” his mother said. “Come in, sit down.”

“I don’t wish to—impose,” Lovett said, and the sound of his voice yanked Jon’s head up from the plate—how could it not?

Lovett looked tense and drawn. There were dark smears under his eyes. Jon ought to feel some sense of satisfaction that Lovett had slept as poorly as he had, but it did not come. Instead he only wanted to draw Lovett close to him, to stroke a careful hand down the line of his spine and take him upstairs to bed.

“Nonsense,” Jon’s father said firmly. “There’s plenty of food, and we welcome your company.”

“I thought, maybe,” Lovett said, and darted a glance at Jon. Jon did not know what the expression on his own face conveyed, but whatever it was Lovett flinched and looked away so quickly that Jon could only hope the rest of the table had not noticed. “I—yes, thank you. Thank you.” He sat in the only empty chair, next to Andy and across from Jon. Andy passed him a scone.

“Thank you,” Lovett said again. He sounded almost startled. Surely he was not surprised to be welcome in the Favreau home? At the breakfast table? What did he think Jon had _said_?

“So polite!” Andy said. “And here before the clock strikes ten—are you feeling well?”

“Andy,” their mother said, but it was a gentle chastisement, and Jon thought he heard a smile in her voice. Perhaps he might have seen it, too, if he could have looked away from Lovett for even an instant.

“What?” Lovett said. He looked at Jon again, and then away again. There was something wild around his eyes, Jon thought.

“It was a joke,” Andy said. “Really, you and Jon have both lost your sense of humor lately.” Lovett twisted to look at Andy, beside him. Not wild, Jon corrected. Hunted, maybe.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lovett said. “I am a _sparkling_ wit.”

“Hmm,” Andy said, and took an over-large bite of his breakfast.

“Lovett,” Jon said, his voice low. He did not know what he intended—to offer some platitude, maybe, some meaningless comfort. Something to ease the set of Lovett’s shoulders, or the tense line of his mouth.

This time Lovett did not look at him at all. _Yes_ , Jon thought distantly. _All right. You’re right_. For, after all, what could he say? There was a moment’s pause. Jon took up his knife and returned to the jam.

To her credit, Jon’s mother did not ask to what they owed the pleasure of Lovett’s company. Perhaps Lovett’s reputation for impulsivity and his known disenchantment with propriety safeguarded him; or perhaps she’d noticed something was amiss, and was choosing, kindly, not to ferret it out. Either way it was a blessing, though what she _did_ ask was less so: “Jonathan,” she said, “you must tell us all about the wedding preparations. Are you nearly finished with invitations?”

Jon took a breath, and let it out again. He squinted down at his plate. There was a distressingly large crumb disturbing the surface of the jam.  

“I am—I think that I may be,” Lovett said. “Of course they must all be written in my hand—confess I do not find it especially diverting. Though I suppose not many do. Or maybe—there may be young ladies and gentlemen of breeding who have a particular, inborn fascination for lettering.” It was as if he could not settle on one direction for his joke, Jon thought, as he prodded at the crumb with the tip of his knife. “I am sure that if I—when I do get them all sent, it will be the most dedicated correspondence I have ever achieved. As your son is so fond of reminding me, I am inconsistent with my letters.”

Jon risked a glance up; Lovett was not looking at him. He was looking down the table. Maybe at Jon’s mother, but his eyes did not seem to alight for long in any particular place.

“You will have to send them more often, once you are in London,” Lady Favreau said. “We would all be very sorry not to hear from you.”

“You—of course,” Lovett said. “I will—I will write. You do me great credit.”

He sounded as if there was not quite enough air in the room. Jon could not comprehend how the rest of the table had not noticed. Everyone was carrying on with their breakfast. Jon had managed to remove the crumb, but it had left a divot in the surface of the jam.

He set his knife down, gently, at the edge of his plate.

“I promised to show Lovett some of the new grafts in the orchard,” he said. “The ones which are starting to bear fruit.”

He pushed back his chair and stood. Lovett blinked up at him. He looked—adrift, almost. As if he could not spot any familiar landmarks.

“What, now?” Andy said. Even their father raised a dubious eyebrow.

“The morning light is by the far the best for these things,” Jon said. He felt so strangely detached from the moment that his voice sounded nearly serene to his own ears. He knew, without question, that Lovett needed to escape this room and this conversation. So escape must be provided. It was simple. “Lovett, will you come?”

“I—yes,” Lovett said, and pushed his chair back, too, and followed Jon down the hall and out the door, into the grey morning.

The grass was heavy with dew; Jon could feel it soaking into his boots within the first twenty paces from the house. But he kept walking, regardless. He did not know exactly where he was going. Maybe they really would walk out and see the new grafts.

They passed a good three minutes in silence, walking between rows of trees, before Lovett said: “You can’t—you—stop.”

Jon stopped, and turned. Lovett was just behind him. Maybe a foot away. It would be so easy to close the distance.

Jon did not move.

“You look terrible,” Lovett said bluntly. “As terrible as it is possible for you to look, anyway—am I still allowed to say those things, now that you know I mean it? Never mind,” he went on, before Jon could answer. His cheeks were a little pink. Perhaps from the cold. “It doesn’t matter. Stop looking after _me_ , when you yourself...”

“I couldn’t sleep,” Jon said. He did not dignify that last with a response.

“Yes,” Lovett said. “Well.” He was peering up at Jon’s face as if searching for something; Jon could not imagine what, but he let Lovett look. All around them, the orchard was waking: birds were calling, and squirrels were chittering. “I thought,” he said finally, “that you might realize—that I might have misremembered, or. I was very drunk.”

“Yes,” Jon said. He knew that. He had known that.

“I thought you might realize that you didn’t mean it,” Lovett said. “I don’t know.”

Jon dropped back into himself with a jolt. “Realize—” he demanded, and reached out. He caught himself with his hand partway to Lovett’s shoulder—to shake him? To draw him in?—and dropped it back to his side. “I am not—didn’t mean _what_? Of course I meant it. Lovett—”

“I can see that _now_ ,” Lovett said. He sounded anxious, distressed, but beneath those almost exasperated. Jon wanted to laugh, or maybe to cry.  

“I’m not going to realize,” he said. Never mind the whiskey, or the lack of sleep: he could not stand the thought that Lovett might be unsure. “I’m not going to _stop_.”

It was foolish, he knew, to offer. Reckless, even—or it would have been if he did not trust Lovett so entirely, even on this wholly new ground. But still, he said it—had to say it— “You know that we could leave. Now. Tonight, or— _now_ , we could leave now, and—”

 _Reach Gretna before anyone could catch us_ , he thought; but Lovett’s face was so drawn, so pinched, that he could hardly get the words out.

“We could—” he said again, but this time, Lovett interrupted.

“We could not,” he said. “Jon, you _know_ that we could not.”

Jon knew, in fact, that they could. But he also knew Lovett, and knew the objections he would raise almost before he spoke.

“No one ever thought I’d make a match,” Lovett said, and then, almost despairingly, “ _any_ match. If it fails—Jon, you know how savagely the buzzards will descend, and who will suffer at their hands: Stephanie, my parents— _your_ parents—Andy—”

“I think,” Jon said, trying to imagine that he might win this argument, “that Andy would like nothing more than to call you his—”

“Don’t,” Lovett said. “You’re not—don’t.”

“I had to try,” Jon said. He attempted a smile. “It is not as if I can forget you—even if you were not my dearest friend, I could not… I’m sorry. I know it’s not what either of us would want. It isn’t what I want for _you_ , to leave everything behind, to—to run away. But we could stay, too. If there will be scandal—”

“There will be,” Lovett said flatly.

“Then _let_ there be scandal. I have never known you to fear such a thing. Not if—it would not be anyone else’s choice. It would be yours. _Ours_ —”

“I don’t fear for myself,” Lovett said. “Stop, now. No more. Is any of this supposed to make me feel better? No. You’ve got to stop. You’ve got to stop, and to marry someone—maybe you won’t fall in love with her across a crowded room, that’s fine, but you’re going to marry _someone_ , and fall in love, and—and be happy.” His mouth was set in a grim, determined line, and the tilt of his jaw was downright defiant. Jon recognized the look: Lovett choosing his argument. Staking out his ground.

“Lovett,” he began, but Lovett barreled on.

“There is Miss Ryan,” he said. “I’ve seen the way you laugh at her jokes, you’re practically courting her already. And she isn’t _blind_ , or an idiot, so I presume there’s some interest.”

Jon felt as if his ribs were being compressed. It ached.

“Or Miss Brown,” Lovett said. He was picking up steam, words almost collapsing, one on top of the other. “Lord Madison’s friend. Have you met her? She is—well, if anyone could be too good for you, she would be; but I am sure if you went about it with intent, you could charm her, and she reads the most interesting books. You would not want for conversation, or for a sparring partner.”

“Lovett,” Jon scratched out. He cleared his throat. Lovett paid him no mind.

“Or Miss Somanader,” he said bullishly. “I know I argued against it, but I was teasing you. She’s whip-smart, and beautiful, and—and _kind_ , and she won’t let you get away with anything. You’d like that. And you wouldn’t try to make her stop writing—she—she deserves someone like you. You would be well-matched. You would be very happy together, I am sure of it—”

“Lovett, _stop_ ,” Jon said. He wanted again to reach out and touch; to take Lovett by the shoulders, or catch hold of his hands. Lace their fingers together. Stem the tide, somehow. He could not bear to hear more of it. “I am not going to marry someone—someone else.”

“Yes, you _are_ ,” Lovett said desperately. The words burst out of him. Jon almost recoiled at the force of them. “You have to be happy with someone else. You must see that.” His voice was strange, insistent and frightened in equal parts. “You have to be happy with someone, or else what have I done?”

He was staring at Jon, his hands flung wide, palms upward, arguing and appealing all at once. Jon knew, in an instant, what he should say. He knew that he should offer reassurance. Comfort. And yet the truth weighed so heavily on his tongue that he could not prevent his mouth from opening.

“I won’t,” he said. His chest was tight. “I’m sorry.”

Lovett stared at him, and for a moment Jon was certain he would begin shouting again: his mouth twisted up at one side, and he drew a shaking breath, and then, in the space between one breath and the next—Jon was so startled that he almost did not realize—but then he heard another ragged breath, and another, and saw—

“Lovett,” he said, miserable, without meaning to. He took a step forward.

“ _Don’t_ ,” Lovett choked out. He was crying in earnest now, and he looked furious about it, his face screwed up. He lifted a hand and scrubbed it over his eyes. “You _have_ to be happy,” he said, and shook his head when Jon tried to speak again. “You _have_ to,” he repeated.

Jon had—for what felt like the first time in his life, or at least the first time with Lovett—nothing to offer.

“You cannot be—if you are unhappy, then _I_ am the one who—”

“I’m sorry,” Jon said again. How had he spent so much of the last twenty-four hours apologizing? Surely this was not how it was meant to be when you realized—

“If you truly—if you care for me,” Lovett said. His voice shook. “If you care for me then you will find someone _else_.”

Jon shook his head. His own eyes were burning, his vision blurring, and Lovett must have noticed, for he scoffed, still breathless, tear tracks staining his cheeks.

“Of all the times to dig your heels in,” Lovett said. His voice was unsteady. “The famously amiable Lord Favreau. _Famously_ agreeable. But when I… when I try…” He palmed his face. “Can you attempt to imagine,” he said, “how hard I would be to live with? How unpleasant? Loud when you’d like quiet; over-quick to opine; famously _dis_ agreeable. Please, for God’s sake, forget it all. The idea of your happiness being dependent on me—it is ludicrous. Find it funny.”

“I cannot,” Jon said, blinking to try and clear his vision. “You were right, I suppose,” he said. “I chose you the moment I met you. The fault is mine, for not knowing it.”

“ _Now_ you admit it,” Lovett said, struggling a little for a blithe tone, and falling short. “When I cannot enjoy the victory at all.” He fell silent for a moment. Jon felt outside of himself. He was listening again to the birdsong, and then he was imagining _himself_ on the branch above, beside the bird, gazing down at the two of them: Lovett, hunched in on himself, breathing heavily and scrubbing a hand across his eyes at intervals; Jon, fixing him with a look he could never again, he knew, afford to freely unleash.

As if reading his mind, Lovett heaved a shuddering breath and scrubbed a hand once more across his face. “We must,” he said, “look very ridiculous.” He hiccuped, like he might start to laugh, and somehow it made it easier for Jon to bark his own half-laugh and dash the tears from his cheeks and speak.

“There will be no one else,” he said simply. “I love you.”

He waited for Lovett to protest, or argue, or to turn and walk away. He did none of it. He only stood there, and stared at Jon, his face wet with tears, his eyes wide and hungry. Jon caught what remained of his breath, and then lost it all again saying, “Do you—?”

“Always,” Lovett said. “Of course. I’ve always loved you.”

Jon inhaled raggedly, and for a moment could not say anything at all.

“You can’t,” Lovett said, something testing and final at once in his tone.

“I can’t,” Jon echoed.

“…Alright,” Lovett said, and pressed his hands to his face. His shoulders were not heaving; he did not seem to be crying. But he did not say anything more for a while.

Jon felt as if he had handed Lovett some fundamental part of himself. He felt hollowed out. And yet he would not change it; he would not take it back. He thought again of stepping forward and gripping Lovett’s wrists, pulling his hands gently away from his face so that Jon could smooth his thumbs over Lovett’s cheeks and wipe away the tears. But he could hear Lovett’s voice trembling on the words, _if you care for me_ , and he was rooted to the spot.

“I will,” he said instead, uselessly. “I—we must both compose ourselves.” He could not help but laugh again. “Crying in the gardens.”

“Like children with skinned knees,” Lovett agreed. His voice was muffled: he had not moved his hands. But as Jon watched, he shook his head, and then lifted his face. His eyes were red.

Jon did not know what he was meant to do.

“Shall we—back to the house?” he asked.

“Back to our own houses, I think,” Lovett said. “I do not know how I would explain—”

“Yes,” Jon said. His own eyes must be just as red as Lovett’s, after all. “No, you are—that is correct, of course. That is sensible.”

“Do not _dare_ accuse me of being sensible,” Lovett said, all bluster, and Jon watched as his own hand lifted as if in a dream, out of his power, and reached out. His fingertips dragged across Lovett’s elbow.

“I—” But he could not go on. He could not explain himself. He knew he should not be touching Lovett, and he was touching him anyway. He had to stop, and he did not want to. As he began to withdraw his hand, however, Lovett grasped his forearm, fingers curling into a loose grip. Jon matched him. It was the most innocuous touch—almost as if they were old friends meeting after a long absence and shaking hands—except that Jon couldn’t take his eyes off of the place where his fingers dug into the damp wool of Lovett’s coat, denting the material. He only looked up when he heard Lovett take a breath, and was just in time to watch Lovett’s eyes flutter shut. His eyebrows drew close together, as if he were memorizing the feeling.

It was only an instant before Lovett let go, abruptly, and blinked his wet lashes open.

“Well,” he said. “We’ve made a scene.” He smiled wanly. Jon would never love anybody the way he loved him. He could not understand how it had taken so long to realize. He could not understand how he might ever possibly forget it. It did not matter; he did not want to.

“We will always be friends,” Jon said. “You must—indulge me. Tell me we will still be friends.”

“Of course we will,” Lovett said. His voice was quiet, but it carried in the morning air.

“I will have someone see to your horse,” Jon said.

“I walked,” Lovett said and then, with a rueful edge, “I thought it might clear my head.” He shrugged, a little twitch of his shoulders, and made a shooing motion with his hands. “Off you go, then.”

“We are in _my_ orchard,” Jon said, but if he could do this for Lovett—even if it was the _only_ thing he could do for Lovett—then, fine. He would do it. He turned determinedly on his heel, and walked back toward the house.

 

 

It stayed gray and miserable all day. Heavy, sleeting rain fell intermittently, rattling against the roof and the window panes. Jon had never in his life felt so drained and listless; he sat all afternoon in the parlor, trying to recompose himself. If he could just find a way to—to set it all aside—to forget it, as Lovett had asked him to. He was worrying everybody; that was clear from the way they hovered, passing through the parlor again and again, sitting now and then and asking what was on his mind; wasn’t the weather dismal? Was it wearing on him? Yes, he agreed, it was, and then became so lost in his own thoughts that he didn’t notice when they left again.

Andy asked, once, what had happened the night before. “You left in a dreadful hurry,” he said, lounging somewhat rakishly in a chair across from Jon. He was becoming quite ridiculous in his dress—his cravat was giving Jon a headache. “Was Lovett even awake? If indeed Lovett is who you—but that must be where you went. Where else?”

“Yes,” Jon said, with effort. “He was—I had merely remembered… A matter of business. It was… it would not wait, I thought. It is settled. I should have left it till morning, anyway.”

“I am not, in fact, a fool, Jon,” Andy said after a long silence.

“For my sake,” Jon said stiffly, “pretend to be.”

“Easily done,” Andy said. It stung to be pitied—even by someone who could not possibly understand what he was pitying Jon _for_ —but it was kind of him to drop the matter without argument. “I’m for Dorchester this afternoon, rain be damned; will you accompany me? Life will look better on the other side of a bout.”

“No, thank you,” Jon said. “And don’t bet on the match—you always lose.”

“Ah,” Andy said, “and he is the eldest again! The natural order is restored. Good day, then—”

After dinner, a too-quiet affair, Jon drank one small glass of brandy before the fire. The urge to overindulge was strong. Drunkenness, at least, might quiet his mind and give him some respite from his own circuitous thoughts. But it occurred to him—a sudden bolt of fear down his spine—that if he _did_ get well and truly drunk—what if he forgot everything? The whole day? What if he woke and could not remember if Lovett had really gripped his elbow in the orchard, if he’d genuinely looked at Jon as if he’d been waiting a lifetime to be allowed? He pushed the decanter aside and watched the flames instead.

There was more thunder that night. It rolled and rolled. _In the morning_ , Jon thought as he lay in bed, sleepless, and then didn’t know what he meant to do. He fell asleep still uncertain, thinking of Lovett lying in his own bed, just a few miles away, and wondering how he had endured the day.

 

 

“Lady Standish,” Morton announced the next morning. Jon, who had slept late and was trying to brace himself with tea in the parlor, had an instant to wonder what Stephanie might call for—or on whose behalf she might be calling—and then she burst into the room, a whirlwind of skirts and fury.

“Is he here?” she demanded. Jon startled, and sat upright.

“Is who here?” he asked, though if he thought about it—

“You know full well who,” Stephanie said. She looked seconds away from peering behind the chair, or maybe beneath the settee. “My _brother_ —my willful fool of a brother—is he here?”

“No,” Jon said. “I have not seen him since yesterday—”

“Yesterday?” Stephanie said. She whirled on him so quickly Jon wanted to flinch, and only held his ground out of some—perhaps misplaced—pride. “He was here yesterday? And what did he _say_ , yesterday?”

“He—I do not think—”

“I _knew_ it,” Stephanie said, and sank into the armchair across from Jon. “I knew it!” She was up again. “So where is he, then, if he is not here? Did you hide him away somewhere? Did he convince you, somehow? I have only done, in every instance, what he insisted he _wanted_ —”

“I have not hidden him away,” Jon said. Understanding was creeping over him slowly, like a fever. “Do you mean to say—you do not know where he is?”

“Do you mean to say that _you_ do not?” Stephanie said. Jon shook his head, mute. Stephanie stared at him, a long and piercing stare, and then collapsed back into the chair again.

“Damn it all to hell,” she said, and then pointed to him. “If you breathe a word about my language—to anyone—if you venture a word of complaint—”

“Damn your language,” Jon said. “He has not disappeared overnight. How is it possible that you do not know—what do you mean?”

“Oh, he left a note,” Stephanie said. “Of course. Three lines.” She finally seemed to be losing the frantic energy which had propelled her until now. “Addressed to our parents. He said that he had to leave, that he could not marry Mr. Clarke, and that he would admit, just this once, that I had been correct. Now _what_ do you suppose he meant by that?”

Jon had, at least, the good sense to know a rhetorical question when he heard one. Anyway, he was not sure he could have answered if he’d wanted to. His head was a giddy whirl of worry and love and something that might, if he did not look it directly in the eye, turn out to be hope. It was the worry, though, that predominated.

“And his horse is gone,” Stephanie added, “which means he is even now making time toward some unknown destination. God only knows where he’s got it in his head to go!”

“We must find him,” he said.

“A grand plan!” Stephanie retorted acidly. “I cannot believe it never occurred to me until now! For goodness’ sake, Jon, what do you think I am here trying to do?”

There was a knock at the sitting room door.

“Come in,” Jon said, entirely out of habit. A footman entered, carrying a tray of letters.

“Your mail, sir,” he said.

“Oh, well, when you have finished sorting through your love notes and your party invitations,” Stephanie snapped.

The footman left the tray on the end table at Jon’s elbow and, wisely, departed the room.

“There must be somewhere else we can look,” Jon said. “We should make a list. And send letters to his other friends. Someone must know—”

He cast his eyes about the room, echoing Stephanie’s earlier survey, as if he might spot Lovett in some corner, giggling at what a brilliant joke he’d managed. He was not there, of course. There was only the fire, and Stephanie, and the pile of letters, which—

“Oh,” Jon said, more breath than sound, and fumbled for the envelope.

“What?” Stephanie asked. There was a letter opener in the desk, not two paces away; Jon tore at the envelope with his fingernails. It was addressed in Lovett’s hand.

_~~Lord Favreau~~ _ _Jon,_

_Well, I’ve made a horrible mess of it all, haven’t I? Don’t worry—I’ve fixed it. Or at any rate, I’ve fixed that my mistakes will be my own, and harm no one else._

_I hope someone will explain to Mr. Clarke that it is not his fault, not any of it. Although I suspect he would not take all that much convincing, really. He was not un-fond of me, but he is also not a gibbering idiot, and I think he probably saw the root of the difficulty quite plainly. Besides which, it was not a love match. I know you do not need to be told_ that.

 _I couldn’t bear it if_ —

Here Jon could not make out the rest of the sentence. It was scribbled out so heavily that all that was left was several long lines of dark ink.

“My brother,” Stephanie said, her tone a frightful mix between scorn and worry and weary, grudging fondness, “has sent you a _letter_.”

Jon read on.

_I will try to be a much more faithful correspondent from now on. You were so fond of teasing me, before, for my failures in that particular area. I wonder if you can see why, now—every time I sat down to write you, I felt myself poised on a cliff’s edge. A single gust of wind, an errant impulse, could have sent me tumbling into the abyss, and I might have written it all out, everything I felt, and posted it before I had the chance to think better. But there is no such risk now, and I will write you as many letters as you like._

_It may be optimistic to think you will even want me to write you letters, but I confess—though it be naive, or selfish—that I cannot imagine you won’t._

_I have always loved_ your _letters. You must know that. I do not think I even tried to hide it, particularly. Do you know that I saved them all? In a great bundle at the back of my top desk drawer. How very sentimental of me. Perhaps you can write me a few more, and they’ll be waiting for me in port. Are sailors’ lives actually as romantic as that? I doubt it._

_I hope at least that I will have many adventures to write about. I really do think it will be exhilarating to see the world in this way, and to examine it all with the sort of careful eye expected of a scientist. Maybe I’ll make some thrilling new discovery. More likely I’ll see some interesting flora, and fauna, and draw them rather badly in my journal, but that has its charms._

_Perhaps I shan’t return to England for many years—I do not have much of an idea of how long a true journey of exploration might take. Still, when I am back, I’m sure I will find you settled. Please know that—_

Here again, the words were blotted out.

_If you—_

And again.

_There—as usual, I have exhausted my supply of rationality and good sense._

_Be happy. It’s all I’ve ever wanted for you._

_Yours, always, and most sincerely,_

_Jon Lovett_

“I have to go to him,” Jon said. He was standing—when had he done that?

“Of course we do,” Stephanie said. She stood, too, her face alight with anxious energy. “Where is he?”

“I—” Jon scanned the letter anew. There was a moment or two of silence.

“I will _strangle_ him,” Stephanie said, and sank back into her chair yet again. “He did not tell you! He did not say! What is the use of some grand, sweeping declaration if you do not _mention_ your destination to the declaree!”

And indeed, Lovett had not said. Jon swept his eyes through the letter again, line-by-line. Sailors’ lives, scientific observations, a journey of exploration—

“To sea, I think,” Jon said.

 _Be happy_. Jon was of half a mind to strangle Lovett himself. Had he not made it perfectly clear, these last two days, where his happiness lay?

“To _sea_?” Stephanie said. “He does not do anything by half measures, does he? What sort of a sailor does he think he will make? Never mind, anyway—we’ve already lost too much time.”

She made no move to try and take the letter from him and read it herself, which showed admirable restraint on her part—or perhaps only good sense, for Jon couldn’t imagine giving it up. He was distantly aware that he was clutching it very tightly indeed.

“A scientist, I think,” he said. “Not a sailor.”

“A shipboard scientist,” Stephanie said. “Do you know, I almost feel I should have guessed it somehow. That is precisely the sort of thing he would run off to become, in a fit of—I will not say pique. I will not! It does not _matter_ —Jon, come along.” She turned to go, clearly expecting him to follow.

“Stephanie,” he said before she’d more than half-crossed the room.

She stopped and turned. Her curls, he realized for the first time, were in genuine disarray, and there was a rip in her skirt, as if she’d caught it on something and had no time to change. She looked impatient. When she caught a glimpse of his face, though, her own softened. “Jon,” she said, “I neither require, nor, given our time constraints, even _desire_ a full confession. Come—if we take the carriage to Whiteley, we can refresh the horses before noon, and perhaps make Portsmouth before sundown, and _surely_ he cannot have managed passage on a ship bound out today!”

“How did you—?”

“I’ve known you since you were a child,” Stephanie said. “It’s very easy to tell when your conscience is weighing on you.”

“It’s not,” Jon said. “I mean—it _is_ true, my behavior has not been…”

“Do not absolve my brother,” she said dryly, and cast an impatient look towards the door. “I’m sure _his_ behavior ‘has not been.’”

“His behavior has been beyond reproach,” Jon blurted out. He could feel himself drawing up, defensive.

Stephanie raised an eyebrow.

“Leaving aside today’s—I only meant to say that he hasn’t—what I have done, I mean—not that—please disregard me,” he said, finally calling himself to heel. “It is irrelevant anyway. I only stopped you to say… if your aim in pursuing Lovett is to avert a scandal, we will find ourselves at cross-purposes before long, Steph. For I’m afraid my intent is quite the opposite.”

Stephanie’s jaw twitched. “Well do I know it,” she said, and then, to Jon’s surprise, narrowed her eyes and said, in lively tones, “And if you have known me a lifetime and _truly_ still believe I would chase him down and drag him back only to order him at gunpoint into an unwanted marriage—then I will _not_ smile on your wedding day, Jon, and indeed, will affect so dour a countenance that no one else will dare smile either.”

“Steph,” Jon said helplessly.

With a weary huff of breath, she crossed the room, and reached out to take his hand in hers. “Jon,” she said, “if there is a world in which you and my brother are happy, and the ton has too much to say about it; and, alternately, a world in which he sails away—and makes, if I may editorialize, a very poor sailor indeed, for what he’ll have to say about grog and hardtack I cannot begin to imagine—and never comes home or knows his nieces and nephews, who are forced only to imagine him tromping around Arctic climes with an enormous beard, which would suit him ill, and wrapped all around in furs, and he is unhappy—and you are unhappy— There is a catching madness here,” she said abruptly, and squeezed his hand once before wheeling around and bearing down on the door, “for you have me talking nonsense. You _know_ which world I will choose—and yet, every second we pass here makes the wrong one likelier—Morton!” she called out. “We must have the carriage—and quickly, please! We are in the greatest possible hurry!”

 

 

The carriage was brought around at a speed that did the household staff great credit. Stephanie did not wait for anyone to offer her a hand up.

“With _haste_ ,” she said to the driver, as she scrambled aboard.

“As the lady says,” Jon said, and followed her. He was dimly aware that he was still clutching the letter in his fist; it seemed possible, somehow, that it might fly from his hand and follow Lovett south to the sea, and that must be prevented at all costs. It was—it sounded so wonderfully, infuriatingly like him that it was almost as if Lovett was there, rattling along in the carriage, as Jon smoothed the paper out against his leg and read it again.

 _Fixed that my mistakes will be my own,_ Lovett had written, _and harm no one else._ It was ludicrous. Ludicrous! Jon felt fit to burst with it. Here was Lovett, announcing his pretty little solution, and it was to separate himself from everything he knew, from _Jon_ —that was harm done, and no mistake. Surely Lovett must see that. Jon felt the strange urge to turn the letter over and write his own reply onto the back, as if the words would reach Lovett that way. Of course, he knew it was not so; and yet he still wished for pen, and ink, and a smoother road.

Only—what would he say? He had far more questions than answers to offer up. _Where do you imagine you can go that I will not follow?_ he might write, or, _What sort of happiness can I possibly find without you?_

Or, he thought, scanning the page yet again, _You kept my letters?_

It was a tender, aching thought, that the letters Jon had written from school at seventeen, homesick and missing Lovett desperately, had lived side-by-side with those from when he was twenty-one, or twenty-five, or those from just this past summer. Why had he not explained, in any of them, the way he felt? The way that Lovett was so dear to him he could not imagine life without him, or, beyond that, life with anyone _else_?

Well, perhaps he had. Only he had not known it, and Lovett had not seen it.

“Can we not go any faster?” Jon said, finally glancing up. Stephanie opened her mouth as if to respond, even as the carriage took a bend in the road at such a pace that Jon and Stephanie were both shunted sideways into the wall.

Stephanie arched a speaking eyebrow. Jon bit his tongue, and bent his head to read the letter again.  

They arrived in Whiteley before noon, and Stephanie was once again speaking even as she alighted from the carriage.

“The horses must rest,” she said to the driver, “and be fed, and watered—but only for exactly as long as you think is necessary, and no longer.”

Jon watched as the man frowned, mulling the question over, and found that even _that_ wait was far too long.

“Never mind,” Jon said. “We will pay to stable them here, and for a fresh pair, and be on our way.”

Stephanie shot him a startled glance, but did not object, and it was only perhaps twenty minutes before they were once more making their way south at speed.

“I do not think there are scientific expeditions which depart from Portsmouth, or at least not many,” Stephanie said. “He cannot think he will book or beg passage to some jungle or tundra or desert from there, not today. He will have to sail on to some other port—Plymouth, perhaps, or even Le Havre.” Jon could not tell whether she sought to reassure herself, or him. But he did not feel the certainty she claimed that Lovett would stay within reach.

“I do not know if it matters where he goes,” Jon said. “He wishes not to be found, and that will be his aim, whether he sails to Plymouth or Le Havre or Cairo or to New York, for that matter. If we can only discover where he is bound—there is nowhere we cannot follow.”

Jon did not point out that his funds were equal to the task, for he did not want to seem as if he were pitying Stephanie in some way; but the fact was that they _were_ , and so was his determination. He would find Lovett, of course he would—and yet he could not shake the thought that surely _some_ research vessels departed from Portsmouth, and if that were so, then surely there was a _chance_ one would depart today. It was not to be borne. This time he did not ask Stephanie; he simply leaned out the window, and called to the driver.

“Can we not go any faster?” he shouted.

The driver made no reply, but there was a jolt as the carriage fairly flew over a hillock in the road. It still did not seem fast enough but Jon could think of no way to speed their pace any further, so he drew his head back in and clung grimly to his seat for the remainder of the ride.

When they reached the outskirts of Portsmouth, of course, the carriage had to slow to accommodate the busier streets. It was almost unbearable to be so close and to trot along behind carts and horses and foot traffic. Jon was tempted to join this last himself. He could feel his blood thrumming through his veins, and he itched to act, to _move_.

“Unless you are as fleet as Mercury, you will not get to the docks any faster than the horses will,” Stephanie said, as if she had read his mind. Jon found that he was leaning forward in his seat, peering down the road.

“Of course,” he said. “You are right, of course.”

Still, he could not sit back.

The place grew louder and louder as they drew closer and closer to the sea. The streets and sidewalks were filled with back-and-forth—merchants and officers alike jostled for space, and each shop they passed was crowded with customers. There must be several of his Majesty’s ships in port, for the navy men were everywhere, and made up a good half of the crowd. Any one of them, it seemed to Jon, could be on a mission of exploration, and might be in search of a scholar to undertake it with him. And there they were, all thronging through the streets—streets Lovett must have passed through hours ago, now—there was no _time_.

Even as he thought it, the carriage at last halted, for the road had ended and given way to the pedestrian throngs moving up and down the docks. Jon fumbled for the latch of the door, and then gave it up as a bad job and put his shoulder to it instead, letting his weight carry him clumsily out and into the street. He found himself again coiled all through with the need to take action, but what action to take? Portsmouth docks were a maelstrom of activity, and there were ships being loaded and unloaded, making anchor and making sail, as far as the eye could see. Lovett could be on any one of them.

“We must adopt a military strategy,” Stephanie said decisively. “Divide and conquer. I will go East, if you go West.” So saying, she hitched up her skirts and moved off along the docks; Jon could hear her calling out loudly to a passing clerk before she was out of earshot.

He did the same, in the opposite direction. The first three men he spoke to could not help him, or would not, and he could feel despair closing his throat. But the fourth man he stopped, like a most unlikely angel, paused and told him he might have seen someone answering Lovett’s description inquiring about passage on a ship bound for Plymouth. Not only that, but the man could give Jon directions, and a name: the Glory, anchored only a few minutes further along the docks. Jon hardly spared the time to thank him before he set off again at a run.

The Glory, when Jon found it, was a wild hub of activity—a fact which only served to further inflame Jon’s fears. It had the look of a ship preparing imminently to depart. Burly sailors were busily carting creaking chests and bulging bags to shore, as well as carrying indistinguishable chests and bags back aboard. The sails were up. If Jon could not find Lovett here—if he _were_ on this ship, tucked away in some coil of rope, hidden from sight—even all the money in Jon’s purse could not stop it from sailing, and taking Lovett with it.

It was useless even to consider it. Jon didn’t have time for the tight feeling in his chest that made it hard to breathe, or think. He _had_ to think now. He was going to find Lovett. He _was_.

One side effect of the hubbub surrounding the Glory was that no one seemed much inclined to pay attention to Jon. On the one hand, being ignored or brushed off by everyone he tried to question was infuriating. There was, it seemed, no amount of urgency he could convey that would move the men carting crates and barrels off the boat to stop and take his inquiries seriously. They grunted as they moved past, some jerking their shoulders uselessly in the direction of the shipmaster’s office.

On the other hand, with no one willing even to stop and talk, it was the work of a moment simply to board the boat instead. No one asked his business, or tried to bar him from striding up the gangway behind a few busy crewmen. What did he think he was going to do, he asked himself wildly as he covered the last few yards and descended onto the deck. He had no idea where to look for Lovett—but surely _someone_ on the damned boat must be willing to speak with him. There must, somewhere, be a captain—some authority—who could be brought to take Jon seriously.

In the end, though, he didn’t have to find anybody. Nor did he have to tear the ship apart with his own two hands. He’d barely taken two steps across the deck, stomach already lurching at the unsteady pitch of the deck beneath his feet, before he heard: “—upside _down?_ Surely not! I thought myself talking to a little boy, not a monkey.”

“I _am_ a boy, sir,” a child’s voice responded, and as a man bent beneath the weight of an enormous barrel stepped thankfully to one side, Jon could clearly see—

“Lovett!” he cried out, just as, from across the deck, a voice boomed out, “Stephens!”

The boy beside Lovett startled, head whipping to one side; Lovett startled too. The pair of them had been staring together up at one of the enormous masts, heads craned backwards to get a glimpse of the crow’s nest, far above. Lovett’s arms were full of packages, and indeed, as he jerked his head round to stare at Jon in clear consternation, he almost dropped one of these, and fumbled to get his arms back around the stack. He did not, Jon thought gratefully, stop staring at Jon: as if (damn him!) he had truly never expected to see him again.  

“Stephens!” the voice called out again.

“ _Bollocks_ ,” the child said feelingly, and snatched Lovett’s unstable pile of packages right out of his arms before turning to go below-decks.

“Lovett,” Jon said again, but Lovett cut him off almost immediately. He seemed to be trying to school his face, and wrenched his eyes away from Jon to peer back up at the mast.

“Stephens,” Lovett said, “has been explaining the duties of the ship’s boys—of course I knew they must climb the rigging, but did you realize—” here he gestured upwards—”they can only achieve the lookout by—observe, that stretch there—”

“For God’s sake,” Jon snapped, “I don’t _care_.”

“Ah,” Lovett said. “Well, certainly—you have no reason to take an interest. I, on the other hand—”

“You are trying me!”

“You are trying _me_ ,” Lovett retorted. He crossed his arms across his chest, then uncrossed them, then re-crossed them before finally turning to face Jon. “If I’d had any notion of you racing after me like this—”

“You’re a fool if you didn’t,” Jon said.

“Then I am a fool,” Lovett snapped. He had the look of a man who might bolt at any second. Let him try, Jon thought—where could he go? Where could he go that Jon would not follow? “Please leave,” Lovett said, lower, in a tense, clipped voice. “Was my letter unclear? Did I fail to clarify how—how serviceable a solution I have hit upon?”

“It will not serve me,” Jon said raggedly.

Lovett blinked, as if startled by Jon’s conviction—how could he be, after the events of the last forty-eight hours?—but then he rallied.

“It _will_ serve you,” he said. His mouth was twisted to one side. “You may insist all you like, but it _will_. You are—I should not have written that letter.”

Jon felt a twinge of something almost like fear. He had the urge to reach into his pocket and draw the letter out again, to assure himself that it was real. It _was_. Of course it was. And that was—

“But you did write it,” he said.

“What a keen observation,” Lovett began, but Jon cut him off before he could spiral into some digression that would surely leave them miles from where Jon meant to be, and from what he meant to say.

“You _did_ write it,” he said again. “You wrote it, and you sent it to me—what did you imagine would happen? How long have we known each other? You _cannot_ have thought I would not come after you.”

“Perhaps,” Lovett said, shifting his weight from his toes to his heels, and back again, “perhaps I underestimated your penchant for action—“

“You did not,” Jon said. He had a growing sense of surety. “You knew I would come after you. You _wanted_ me to come after you.”

“Very full of yourself, aren’t you,” Lovett said. There was a tremor just beneath the surface of his voice, and the words were nothing like as cutting as they should have been.

“You don’t want to go to sea,” Jon said. He stepped across the deck, toward Lovett, and then had to stop and draw a deep breath in through his nose. Christ, he hated boats. “You don’t want it—you wouldn’t like it,” he said. “You want to be—happy. With me.”

He paused out of habit, waiting for some sharp rejoinder, but none came. Lovett was watching him as if Jon was revealing secrets in some other language: concentration and trepidation and something else, something quieter, all passing across his face.

“I know you have it all twisted around in your head,” Jon said, pressing his advantage, “so that you are the villain of the piece, and you must be—be selfless, and deny yourself this happiness, only—it isn’t selfless. It isn’t. It is selfish. It is hurting _me_.”

Lovett winced visibly and took an unsteady step back. Jon, in return, took an equally unsteady step forward. He was rewarded with the feeling of the deck moving beneath his feet. He tried again to take a steadying breath; the air, however, smelled of salt and fish and sewage. He could feel himself going green. “Lovett—” he said.

“I don’t think myself a villain,” Lovett said. He blinked rapidly and cast what struck Jon as a longing glance at the far railing. _I dare you_ , Jon thought grimly. It would bring him no joy to jump in after Lovett, but if he had to… He would do it if he had to. “How absurdly melodramatic you sound.”

“ _I?_ ”

“Yes, you,” Lovett said. “It is refreshing, for once, to find myself the most sensible voice in the conversation.”

“There is nothing sensible about leaving me,” Jon said, too loudly. His eyes were stinging a little. It was hard to blink regularly when he half-expected Lovett to disappear, as if by magic, each time he closed his eyes even for an instant, and leave Jon with just this last look seared in his mind: Lovett’s furrowed brow, his darting eyes; his sleeves rolled up to his elbows and his nose already sunburnt. “You ought to be wearing a hat,” Jon said accidentally. “How will you survive at sea if you don't even know _that_?” And then: “You kept my letters?“

Lovett flushed abruptly, entirely red. “You ought not be on a ship at all,” he said in a quick, blustering tone. “You look like you’re about to be ill.”

“I am,” Jon said grimly. “ _All_ of them?”

“What is written in a letter…” Lovett began, and clenched his jaw.

“Make way,” a burly man grunted, cutting between them, muscles straining under the weight of a heavily scuffed trunk.

“I only _wrote_ it,” Lovett said, voice raised above the ruckus, “for a reason. You ought not bring it up with me.”

“Why?”

“It’s—it’s embarrassing,” Lovett said.

“It isn’t,” Jon said.

“It _is_ ,” Lovett said, through gritted teeth. “Have you never written anything out in a letter that you were—startled to learn, once you read it again? Or that you knew you could not say? You have. You have! Don’t pretend it’s only me.”

“It is not only you,” Jon said. “But—“

Another man—a sailor, or perhaps a dockhand, stepped between them. He had an armful of parcels, some of them wedged in very precariously.

“Will you hold this?” he said to Jon, and without waiting for an answer he spilled three of them into Jon’s arms.

“I—” Jon said, but the man scurried off without another word.

“You had better leave,” Lovett said, “before you are pressed into service.” There was a dismissive note in his voice, as if he had reached the punchline of some joke and had no further need of an audience. Jon was certain that was not what Lovett really felt; he knew there must be some argument that would win the day. And he knew _Lovett_ , no matter what revelations had come over the last few months. So why could he not hit on the right words?

“I daresay there is plenty in my letters that I did not realize at the time,” he said at last. “But there is _nothing_ in them that I would not gladly say to you, every day. Many times a day, if you’d let me.”

He was peering at Lovett over the unwieldy luggage in his arms. He thought of dropping it all to the deck, and only the notion that it might be full of glass, or live animals—or Lord knew what else might be needed for a scientific expedition—stopped him.

“Fine,” Lovett said, throwing up his hands. “Fine, you are—braver than me, or—” Jon could see the top of his head, and one of his wide eyes, and the way his face was hectic with color. He was not understanding—perhaps deliberately not understanding—and he would drag the argument sideways if Jon let him. Jon could not let him.

“Damn it,” he said with feeling, and _did_ drop the parcels. There was the tell-tale sound of glass shattering from at least one of them.

Lovett blinked, owlish, at the packages.

“Well you will never be hired on _now_ ,” he said, torn between mockery and something close to disbelief.

“I do not _care_ ,” Jon said. “Neither of us is going to be hired on. Come home, for all love.”

“I can’t,” Lovett said. His face was pinched, but he wasn’t looking at the railing anymore, or at the parcels scattered across the decking. He was looking at Jon. Mustering his argument, maybe, or maybe—God, Jon thought fervently, _please_ —waiting to be convinced.

“You _can_ ,” Jon said, but Lovett was already shaking his head. Jon could say a hundred things, a thousand, about their lives together, the days they had already lived and the days to come, but he did not know which of them was right, and if he chose wrong—

“Very well,” he heard himself say. Lovett’s mouth rounded, and his shoulders, too, began to curve inwards, and Jon rushed to say: “If you cannot come home, then I will stay here.”

“—What,” Lovett said. The word was almost bitten out.

“If you are going to sea,” Jon said. “To study—cloud formations, or—or puffins, or the position of the stars—or if you are going to tromp through the Arctic with a beard—”

“ _What_ ,” Lovett said again.

“—then I’ll come, too.”

“You will _not_ ,” Lovett said. “You are queasy in _port_. You hate the ocean. You think every seafaring vessel, regardless of its pedigree, is going to sink—and you do not even know _this_ ship’s pedigree—”

“I know you are on it,” Jon said, “and you cannot order me off. And perhaps after some time at sea—perhaps very quickly, even—I will begin to find it most tolerable—”

“You will _not_ ,” Lovett said.

“Then I will not! I will be ill every day, and you will be forced to nursemaid me in my—hammock? It will be a hammock, won’t it? Very well. But surely the ship must now and then make port, and if you promise not to abandon me in the tropics, I might occasionally spend a day on land, and regain a little color. Will you still find me handsome if I am almost always unwell? That is—you do, don’t you? That’s what—never mind. I think—if you forgo the beard—and procure a hat, to save your skin—you will look very well at sea. I have told you, haven’t I, that I do—how handsome—I’m sorry,” Jon said fumblingly, “that I never said so,” and shook his head to try and clear it.

“A _hammock_ ,” Lovett repeated belatedly, as if finding it very difficult to keep up; and added, in appalled tones, “Jon, you would be miserable.”

“I will be miserable if you go and leave me here,” Jon said. “It won’t do. And if you think, in fleeing, to spare me scandal and bear the full measure yourself, pray think again; for I intend to ruin myself completely, with your leave or without it.”

Lovett stared at him. Jon did not want to guess what he was looking for; he stayed very still, and hoped he found it.

“You can’t,” Lovett said after a moment, but he didn’t sound half as assured as he had even a minute before. He sounded almost as if he were asking.

“Then come _home_ ,” Jon said hoarsely. He blinked hard—he couldn’t help himself; the world was beginning to blur—but when he opened his eyes again, Lovett was still there, a strange, caught expression on his face. “Come home,” he repeated, “and write me every letter you never could, and be my husband—Lovett, please—”

“Can you—”

“I can _not_ ,” Jon said, without turning to look at whoever had approached with some bit of ship’s business. His gaze was fixed on Lovett’s face. “Please,” he said again, simply.

Lovett exhaled.

If called upon, Jon could not have described any great change in his expression. It was a difference of such minor degree that he could not say with certainty whether Lovett’s eyes lightened, or his mouth lifted, or whether his brow unfurrowed at all. But it was the same kind of infinitesimal degree which moves the sun from just below the horizon to just above it: all at once, the world was bright, and Jon knew—

“You will,” he said, certain and desperate at the same time.

Lovett ducked his head. He shrugged once, ruefully. When he looked back up, his lips were pressed together, as if he was trying not to give in all at once, but his face was so soft and helpless that it was clear—everything was clear. “A hammock,” he said again, failing to sound remotely scathing. “It is rocking on top of rocking, Jon. _I_ should like it very well, but… You are right. It will not do for you,” he said, and stepped towards Jon so suddenly and unhesitatingly that Jon felt his knees go weak with relief.

“Thank God,” he said, and, staggering forward himself, got an arm around Lovett before his legs could buckle. He was embracing Lovett almost too hard for comfort; but then, Lovett was embracing him just as fiercely, and as Jon pressed his cheek to Lovett’s head, he felt Lovett take a deep, shuddering breath, and clench his fist more tightly against Jon’s back. “It’s alright,” he murmured, turning thoughtlessly to press a kiss against Lovett’s hair. “It’s alright, darling.”

Lovett made a muffled noise against Jon’s chest and then, struggling a little until Jon reluctantly loosened his hold, tipped his chin up. “When you say that,” he told Jon, half-strangled, before, to Jon’s happy surprise, surging up on his toes and kissing Jon once, firm and insistent. “If you _ever_ regret it—”

“ _Stupid_ ,” Jon said, and kissed him again. He’d intended a swift, comforting gesture, but in fact found himself so distracted that he had no idea how much time passed before someone called out, “ _Move_!” just near his ear. He raised his head hazily, breathing heavy, to find a whole mast pushing by, with sailors at each end grunting as they lugged it along. Jon jostled himself and Lovett to one side as best he could; Lovett’s eyes, when Jon glanced back at him, were big and dark, and his lips… “Stupid,” Jon said again. “I never will.” And then: “I’m afraid _you_ will, though, if we don’t get off this damn boat already.”

“Ship,” Lovett corrected, and stroked the back of Jon’s neck once with his thumb before unclasping his arms and retreating from Jon’s embrace. “Come to sea with me,” he murmured. “Nonsensical.”

“I would have done it,” Jon said.

“Non _sens_ ical,” Lovett said again, and then, quieter, “I know you would have.”

Jon exhaled, and felt the last clinging fear drop from his shoulders. He could not help dropping to kiss Lovett once more—but he was quick about it this time. Perhaps the noble reason would have been that they were in the midst of tremendous clamor, and on display for anyone who might care to look, and very much in the way besides. But the truth was, there was a giddy awareness at the back of his mind and pushing ever forward that there was the carriage waiting, and then _home_ , and then—

“Come on,” he said, pulling away. “I haven’t got my sea legs.”

“The ship is _anchored_ ,” Lovett said, but he let Jon guide him down the gangplank, and back to solid land.

It was very tempting, once there, to bend and kiss Lovett again—it would be, Jon sensed, very tempting moment-to-moment for the foreseeable future—but before he even had the chance, there came a shout from further down the docks.

“Ah!” Stephanie said, her voice carrying and somehow dry despite the volume. “I see you have found him!”

Lovett froze. “You brought _Stephanie_?” he hissed. His eyes were very wide. He had, Jon reflected, absorbed a good deal of information in the last twenty minutes alone.

Jon let himself reach out to cup Lovett’s face in his hand, stroking a gentle thumb down his cheekbone. When Lovett’s face only registered further accusation, Jon leaned down, finally, to kiss his cheek, at least: a light, chaste kiss that was _certainly_ permissible in front of God, country, and Stephanie alike.

“More accurate to say she brought me, I think.” He was nothing but grateful. Even as Stephanie strode toward them, and Lovett made a low, resigned sound and hid his face in Jon’s chest—how _could_ he be anything but grateful?

Lovett sighed. His hand was resting on Jon’s side. “I shall never hear the end of this,” he said in an undertone. “Of any of it.”

“Never mind that,” Jon said conciliatorily. “Come—screw your courage to the sticking-place and let Stephanie say I told you so, and let’s go home.”

 

_October 2, 1814_

_Dear Jon_ ,

_Thank you very much for your letter—it arrived just last week, and found the household in good spirits. Wedding preparations continue apace; we have decided it will be a small affair, and decidedly informal, but of course we still hope you will attend._

_All is well in the village, and here at the manor. The horses will be very pleased to hear you asked after them—they too are well._

_And the news of Lovett’s betrothal, while somewhat abrupt, is certainly welcome. I had almost thought—_

_Oh, never mind, there’s no use putting it off. Jon: I hope, as your friend for nearly ten years now, I have earned the right to speak plain when I feel it’s needed. And I do feel it is needed: you do not sound happy. You say it is a good match, but I am not at all sure you believe it. And even if you did believe it—would you be happy then?_

_I have no suggested course of action, which perhaps means I should not have said anything at all. But I do care about you, and I would hate to think you feel the need to conceal anything from me, even if it is something small, and I am worrying over nothing._

_At least you know you can always complain_ _to me, don’t you?_

_Your sincere friend,_

_Tommy_

 

_October 11, 1814_

_Tom—_

_You were quite right about everything, but all has been remedied. Lovett and I are to be wed this afternoon, and then intend to travel immediately to Scotland for a very long and very quiet honeymoon, well removed from the neighborhood gossips. But of course we would be delighted to stop for a wedding on our way north; we will race this letter. Indeed, we may even win, for I’m so happy, I think I could fly._

_Yours heartily and affectionately,_

_Jon_


End file.
